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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Wee Willie Winkie i 

Baa Baa, Black Sheep 21 

His Majesty the King 75 

The Drums of the Fore and Aft ... 97 


WEE WILLIE 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


We are “Somewhere at the Back of 
the Machua Bazaar" ( See page 


221 ) Fontispiece 

Photogravure by John Andrew & Son after 
original by W. Kirkpatrick 

And Mamma Came 68 

Mezzogravure by John Andrew & Son after 
original by W. Kirkpatrick 


The English were not Running .... 150 

Mezzogravure by John Andrew & Son after 
original by W. Kirkpatrick 

He ran at Me, Head on 402 

Mezzogravure by John Andrew & Son after 
original by W. Kirkpatrick 


WEE WILLIE 




I 


3 

















& 





« 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


♦ 






WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


“An officer and a gentleman.” 

TTIS full name was Percival William Wil- 
liams, but he picked up the other name in 
a nursery-book, and that was the end of the 
christened titles. His mother’s ayah called 
him Willi e-baba, but as he never paid the faint- 
est attention to anything that the ayah said, her 
wisdom did not help matters. 

His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and 
as soon as Wee Willie Winkie was old enough 
to understand what Military Discipline meant, 
Colonel Williams put him under it. There was 
no other way of managing the child. When he 
was good for a week, he drew good-conduct 
pay; and when he was bad, he was deprived 
of his good-conduct stripe. Generally he was 
bad, for India offers so many chances to little 
six-year-olds of going wrong. 

Children resent familiarity from strangers, 
and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular 
child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he 
1 


2 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted 
Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th on sight. 
Brandis was having tea at the Colonel’s, and 
Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the pos- 
session of a good-conduct badge won for not 
chasing the hens round the compound. He re- 
garded Brandis with gravity for at least ten 
minutes, and then delivered himself of his 
opinion. 

“I like you,” said he, slowly, getting off his 
chair and coming over to Brandis. “I like you. 

I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. 
Do you mind being called Coppy ? It is because 
of ve hair, you know.” 

Here was one of the most embarrassing of 
Wee Willie Winkie’s peculiarities. He would 
look at a stranger for some time, and then, 
without warning or explanation, would give 
him a name. And the name stuck. No regi- 
mental penalties could break Wee Willie 
Winkie of this habit. He lost his good-con- 
duct badge for christening the Commissioner’s 
wife “Pobs”; but nothing that the Colonel 
could do made the Station forego the nick- 
name, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. “Pobs” 
till the end of her stay. So Brandis was chris- 
tened “Coppy,” and rose, therefore, in the es- 
timation of the regiment. 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


3 


If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in 
any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by 
the mess and the rank and file. And in their 
envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. “The 
Colonel’s son” was idolized on his own merits 
entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not 
lovely. His face was permanently freckled, 
as his legs were permanently scratched, and in 
spite of his mother’s almost tearful remon- 
strances he had insisted upon having his long 
yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. 
“I want my hair like Sergeant Tummil’s,” 
said Wee Willie Winkie, and, his father abet- 
ting, the sacrifice was accomplished. 

Three weeks after the bestowal of his youth- 
ful affections on Lieutenant Brandis — hence- 
forward to be called “Coppy” for the sake of 
brevity — Wee Willie Winkie was destined to 
behold strange things and far beyond his com- 
prehension. 

Coppy returned his liking with interest, 
Coppy had let him wear for five rapturous min- 
utes his own big sword — just as tall as Wee 
Willie Winkie. Coppy had promised him a 
terrier puppy ; and Coppy had permitted him to 
witness the miraculous operation of shaving. 
Nay, more — Coppy had said that even he, Wee 
Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the owner- 
ship of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap- 


4 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


box and a silver-handled “sputter-brush,” as 
Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there 
was no one except his father, who could give 
or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, 
half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with 
the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast. 
Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the un- 
manly weakness of kissing — vehemently kiss- 
ing — a “big girl,” Miss Allardyce to wit? In 
the course of a morning ride, Wee Willie 
Winkie had seen Coppy so doing, and, like the 
gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round 
and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom 
should also see. 

Under ordinary circumstances he would have 
spoken to his father, but he felt instinctively 
that this was a matter on which Coppy ought 
first to be consulted. 

“Coppy,” shouted Wee Willie Winkie, rein- 
ing up outside that subaltern’s bungalow early 
one morning — “I want to see you, Coppy!” 

“Come in, young ’un,” returned Coppy, who 
was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. 
“What mischief have you been getting into 
now?” 

Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notori- 
ously bad for three days, and so stood on a pin- 
nacle of virtue. 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


5 


“I’ve been doing nothing bad,” said he, curl- 
ing himself into a long chair with a studious 
affectation of the Colonel’s languor after a hot 
parade. He buried his freckled nose in a tea- 
cup and, with eyes staring roundly over the 
rim, asked : — “I say, Coppy, is it proper to kiss 
big girls?” 

“By Jove! You’re beginning early. Who 
do you want to kiss ?” 

“No one. My muvver’s always kissing me 
if I don’t stop her. If it isn’t pwoper, how 
was you kissing Major Allardyce’s big girl last 
morning, by ve canal?” 

Coppy’s brow wrinkled. He and Miss Al- 
lardyce had with great craft managed to keep 
their engagement secret for a fortnight. There 
were urgent and imperative reasons why Major 
Allardyce should not know how matters stood 
for at least another month, and this small mar- 
plot had discovered a great deal too much. 

“I saw you,” said Wee Willie Wjnkie, 
calmly. “But ve groom didn’t see. I said, 
‘Hut jao. 9 ” 

“Oh, you had that much sense, you young 
Rip,” groaned poor Coppy, half amused and 
half angry. “And how many people may you 
have told about it?” 

“Only me myself. You didn’t tell when I 


6 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


twied to wide ve buffalo ven my pony was 
lame; and I fought you wouldn’t like.” 

“Winkie,” said Coppy, enthusiastically, 
shaking the small hand, “you’re the best of 
good fellows. Look here, you can’t understand 
all these things. One of these days — hang it, 
how can I make you see it! — I’m going to 
marry Miss Allardyce, and then she’ll be Mrs. 
Coppy, as you say. If your young mind is so 
scandalized at the idea of kissing big girls, go 
and tell your father.” 

“What will happen?” said Wee Willie Win- 
kie, who fimly believed that his father was 
omnipotent. 

“I shall get into trouble,” said Coppy, play- 
ing his trump card with an appealing look at 
the holder of the ace. 

“Ven I won’t,” said Wee Willie Winkie, 
briefly. “But may faver says it’s un-man-ly 
to be always kissing, and I didn’t fink you'd 
do vat, Coppy.” 

“I’m not always kissing, old chap. It’s only 
now and then, and when you’re bigger you’ll 
do it too. Your father meant it’s not good for 
little boys.” 

“Ah!” said Wee Willie Winkie, now fully 
enlightened. “It’s like ve sputter-brush?” 

“Exactly,” said Coppy, gravely. 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


7 


“But I don’t fink I’ll ever want to kiss big 
girls, nor no one ’cept my muvver. And I 
must vat, you know.” 

There was a long pause, broken by Wee Wil- 
lie Winkie. 

“Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy ?” 

“Awfully!” said Coppy. 

“Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha — 
or me ?” 

“It’s in a different way,” said Coppy. “You 
see, one of these days Miss Allardyce will be- 
long to me, but you’ll grow up and command 
the Regiment and — all sorts of things. It’s 
quite different, you see.” 

“Very well,” said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. 
“If you’re fond of ve big girl, I won’t tell any 
one. I must go now.” 

Coppy rose and escorted his small guest to 
the door, adding : “Your the best of little fel- 
lows, Winkie. I tell you what. In thirty days 
from now you can tell if you like — tell any 
one you like.” 

Thus the secret of the Brandis Allardyce 
engagement was dependent on a little child’s 
word. Coppy, who knew Wee Willie Winkie’s 
idea of truth, was at ease, for he felt that he 
would not break promises. Wee Willie Winkie 
betrayed a special and unusual interest in Miss 


8 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


Allardyce, and, slowly revolving round that 
embarrassed young lady, was used to regard 
her gravely with unwinking eye. He was try- 
ing to discover why Coppy should have kissed 
her. She was not half so nice as his own 
mother. On the other hand, she was Coppy’s 
property, and would in time belong to him. 
Therefore it behooved him to treat her with 
as much respect as Coppy’s big sword or shiny 
pistol. 

The idea that he shared a great secret in 
common with Coppy kept Wee Willie Winkie 
unusually virtuous for three weeks. Then the 
Old Adam broke out, and he made what he 
called a “camp-fire” at the bottom of the gar- 
den. How could he have foreseen that the fly- 
ing sparks would have lighted the Colonel’s 
little hayrick and consumed a week’s store for 
the horses? Sudden and swift was the punish- 
ment — deprivation of the good-conduct badge 
and, most sorrowful of all, two days’ confine- 
ment to barracks — the house and veranda — 
coupled with the withdrawal of the light of 
his father’s countenance. 

He took the sentence like the man he strove 
to be, drew himself up with quivering under- 
lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran 
to weep bitterly in his nursery — called by him 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


9 


“my quarters.” Coppy came in the afternoon 
and attempted to console the culprit. 

“I’m under awwest,” said Wee Willie Win- 
kie, mournfully, “and I didn’t ought to speak 
to you.” 

Very early the next morning he climbed on 
to the roof of the house — that was not for- 
bidden — and beheld Miss Allardyce going for 
a ride. 

“Where are you going?” cried Wee Willie 
Winkie. 

“Across the river,” she answered, and trotted 
forward- 

Now the cantonment in which the 195th lay 
was bounded on the north by a river — dry in 
the winter. From his earliest years, Wee Wil- 
lie Winkie had been forbidden to go across the 
river, and had noted that even Coppy — the al- 
most almighty Coppy — had never set foot be- 
yond it. Wee Willie Winkie had once been 
read to, out of a big blue book, the history of 
the Princess and the Goblins — a most wonder- 
ful tale of a land where the Goblins were al- 
ways warring with the children of men until 
they were defeated by one Curdie. Ever since 
that date it seemed to him that the bare black 
and purple hills across the river were inhabited 
by Goblins, and, in truth, every one had said 


10 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


that there lived the Bad Men. Even in his own 
house the lower halves of the windows were 
covered with green paper on account of the 
Bad Men who might, if allowed clear view, 
fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and comfort- 
able bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the river, 
which was the end of all the Earth, lived the 
Bad Men. And here was Major Allardyce’s 
big girl, Coppy’s property, preparing to ven- 
ture into their borders! What would Coppy 
say if anything happened to her? If the Gob- 
lins ran off with her as they did with Curdie’s 
Princess? She must at all hazards be turned 
back. 

The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie re- 
flected for a moment on the very terrible wrath 
of his father; and then — broke his arrest! It 
was crime unspeakable. The low sun threw 
his shadow, very large and very black, on the 
trim garden-paths, as he went down to the 
stables and ordered his pony. It seemed to him 
in the hush of the dawn that all the big world 
had been bidden to stand still and look at Wee 
Willie Winkie guilty of mutiny. The drowsy 
groom handed him his mount, and, since the 
one great sin made all others insignificent, Wee 
Willie Winkie said that he was going to ride 
over to Coppy Sahib, and went out at a foot- 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


ii 


pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flower- 
borders. 

The devastating track of the pony’s feet was 
the last misdeed that cut him off from all sym- 
pathy of Humanity. He turned into the road, 
leaned forward, and rode as fast as the pony 
could put foot to the ground in the direction of 
the river. 

But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can 
do little against the long canter of a Waler. 
Miss Allardyce was far ahead, had passed 
through the crops, beyond the Police-post, 
when all the guards were asleep, and her mount 
was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as 
Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and 
British India behind him. Bowed forward and 
still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into 
Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Al- 
lardyce a black speck, flickering across the 
stony plain. The reason of her wandering was 
simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too- 
hastily-assumed authority, had told her over 
night that she must not ride out by the river. 
And she had gone to prove her own spirit and 
teach Coppy a lesson. 

Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, 
Wee Willie Winkie saw the Waler blunder and 
come down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled 


12 


WEE WILLIE WINKLE 


clear, but her ankle had been severely twisted, 
and she could not stand. Having thus demon- 
strated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was 
surprised by the apparition of a white, wide- 
eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony. 

“Are you badly, badly hurted ?” shouted Wee 
Willie Winkie, as soon as he was within range. 
“You didn’t ought to be here.” 

“I don’t know,” said Miss Allardyce, rue- 
fully, ignoring the reproof. “Good gracious, 
child, what are you doing here?” 

“You said you was going acwoss ve wiver,” 
panted Wee Willie Winkie, throwing himself 
off his pony. “And nobody — not even Coppy 
— must go acwoss ve wiver, and I came after 
you ever so hard, but you wouldn’t stop, and 
now you’ve hurted yourself, and Coppy will be 
angwy wiv me, and — I’ve bwoken my awwest ! 
I’ve bwoken my awwest!” 

The future Colonel of the 195th sat down 
and sobbed. In spite of the pain in her ankle 
the girl was moved. 

“Have you ridden all the way from can- 
tonments, little man? What for?” 

“You belonged to Coppy. Coppy told me 
so !” wailed Wee Willie Winkie, disconsolately. 
“I saw him kissing you, and he said he was 
fonder of you van Bell or ve Butcha or me. 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


13 


And so I came. You must get up and come 
back. You didn’t ought to be here. Vis is a 
bad place, and I’ve bwoken my awwest.” 

“I can’t move, Winkie” said Miss Allardyce, 
with a groan. “Fve hurt my foot. What shall 
I do?” 

She showed a readiness to weep afresh, 
which steadied Wee Willie Winkie, who had 
been brought up to believe that tears were the 
depth of unmanliness. Still, when one is as 
great a sinner as Wee Willie Winkie, even a 
man may be permitted to break down. 

“Winkie,” said Miss Allardyce, “when 
you’ve rested a little, ride back and tell them 
to send out something to carry me back in. It 
hurts fearfully.” 

The child sat still for a little time and Miss 
Allardyce closed her eyes ; the pain was nearly 
making her faint. She was roused by Wee 
Willie Winkie tying up the reins on his pony’s 
neck and setting it free with a vicious cut of his 
whip that made it whicker. The little animal 
headed toward the cantonments. 

“Oh, Winkie! What are you doing?” 

“Hush!” said Wee Willie Winkie. “Vere’s 
a man coming — one of ve Bad Men. I must 
stay wiv you. My faver says a man must 
always look after a girl. Jack will go home, 


14 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


and ven vey’ll come and look for us. Vat’s 
why I let him go.” 

Not one man but two or three had appeared 
from behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart 
of Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for just 
in this manner were the Goblins wont to steal 
out and vex Curdie’s soul. Thus had they 
played in Curdie’s garden, he had seen the pic- 
ture, and thus had they frightened the Prin- 
cess’s nurse. He heard them talking to each 
other, and recognized with joy the bastard 
Pushto that he had picked up from one of his 
father’s grooms lately dismissed. People who 
spoke that tongue could not be the Bad Men. 
They were only natives after all. 

They came up to the bowlders on which Miss 
Allardyce’s horse had blundered. 

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, 
child of the Dominant Race, aged six and three- 
quarters, and said briefly and emphatically 
“Jao!” The pony had crossed the river-bed. 

The men laughed, and laughter from natives 
was the one thing Wee Willie Winkie could 
not tolerate. He asked them what they wanted 
and why they did not depart. Other men with 
most evil faces and crooked-stocked guns crept 
out of the shadows of the hills, till, soon, Wee 
Willie Winkie was face to face with an audi- 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


15 


ence some twenty strong. Miss Allardyce 
screamed. 

“Who are you?” said one of the men. 

“I am the Colonel Sahib’s son, and my order 
is that you go at once. You black men are 
frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must 
run into cantonments and take the news that 
Miss Sahib has hurt herself, and that the 
Colonel’s son is here with her.” 

“Put our feet into the trap ?” was the laugh- 
ing reply. “Hear this boy’s speech !” 

“Say that I sent you — I, the Colonel’s son. 
They will give you money.” 

“What is the use of this talk? Take up the 
child and the girl, and we can at least ask for 
the ransom. Ours are the villages on the 
heights,” said a voice in the background. 

These were the Bad Men — worse than Gob- 
lins — and it needed all Wee Willie Winkie’s 
training to prevent him from bursting into 
tears. But he felt that to cry before a native, 
excepting only his mother’s ayah , would be an 
infamy greater than any mutiny. Moreover, 
he, as future Colonel of the 195th, had that 
grim regiment at his back. 

“Are you going to carry us away?” said 
Wee Willie Winkie, very blanched and un- 
comfortable. 


WEE WILLIE WINKLE 


16 


“Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur ” said the tall- 
est of the men, “and eat you afterward.” 

“That is child’s talk,” said Wee Willie Win- 
kie. “Men do not eat men.” 

A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he 
went on firmly, — “And if you carry us away, 
I tell you that all my regiment will come up in 
a day and kill you all without leaving one. 
Who will take my message to the Colonel 
Sahib?” 

Speech in any vernacular — and Wee Willie 
Winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with 
three — was easy to the boy who could not yet 
manage his “r’s” and “th’s” aright. 

Another man joined the conference, cry- 
ing : — 

“O foolish men! What this babe says is 
true. He is the heart’s heart of those white 
troops. For the sake of peace let them go both, 
for if he be taken, the regiment will break loose 
and gut the valley. Our villages are in the 
valley, and we shall not escape. That regiment 
are devils. They broke Khoda Yar’s breast- 
bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles ; 
and if we touch this child they will fire and 
rape and plunder for a month, till nothing re- 
mains. Better to send a man back to take the 
message and get a reward. I say that this 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


1 7 


child is their God, and that they will spare none 
of us, nor our women, if we harm him.” 

It was Din Mahommed, the dismissed groom 
of the Colonel, who made the diversion, and 
an angry and heated discussion followed. Wee 
Willie Winkie, standing over Miss Allardyce, 
waited the upshot. Surely his “wegiment,” 
his own “wegiment,” would not desert him if 
they knew of his extremity. 

The riderless pony brought the news to the 
195th, though there had been consternation in 
the Colonel’s household for an hour before. 
The little beast came in through the parade 
ground in front of the main barracks, where 
the men were settling down to play Spoil-five 
till the afternoon. Devlin, the Color-Sergeant 
of E Company, glanced at the empty saddle 
and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kick- 
ing up each Room Corporal as he passed. “Up, 
ye beggars! There’s something happened to 
the Colonel’s son,” he shouted. 

“He couldn’t fall off! S’elp me, ’e couldn't 
fall off,” blubbered a drummer-boy. “Go an’ 
hunt acrost the river. He’s over there if he’s 
anywhere, an’ maybe those Pathans have got 
’im. For the love o’ Gawd don’t look for ’im 
in the nullahs! Let’s go over the river.” 


i8 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


‘‘There’s sense in Mott yet,” said Devlin. 
“E Company, double out to the river — sharp!” 

So E Company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, 
doubled for the dear life, and in the rear toiled 
the perspiring Sergeant, adjuring it to double 
yet faster. The cantonment was alive with the 
men of the 195th hunting for Wee Willie Win- 
kie, and the Colonel finally overtook E Com- 
pany, far too exhausted to swear, struggling 
in the pebbles of the river-bed. 

Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie’s 
Bad Men were discussing the wisdom of carry- 
ing off the child and the girl, a look-out fired 
two shots. 

“What have I said?” shouted Din Mahom- 
med. “There is the warning! The pulton are 
out already and are coming across the plain ! 
Get away! Let us not be seen with the boy!” 

The men waited for an instant, and then, as 
another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, 
silently as they had appeared. 

“The wegiment is coming,” said Wee Willie 
Winkie, confidently, to Miss Allardyce, “and 
it’s all wight. Don’t cwy!” 

He needed the advice himself, for ten min- 
utes later, when his father came up, he was 
weeping bitterly with his head in Miss Allar- 
dyce’s lap. 


WEE WILLIE WINKIE 


19 


And the men of the 195th carried him home 
with shouts and rejoicings; and Coppy, who 
had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, 
to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the 
presence of the men. 

But there was balm for his dignity. His 
father assured him that not only would the 
breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the 
good-conduct badge would be restored as soon 
as his mother could sew it on to his blouse- 
sleeve. Miss Allardyce had told the Colonel 
a story that made him proud of his son. 

“She belonged to you, Coppy,” said Wee 
Willie Winkie, indicating Miss Allardyce with 
a grimy forefinger. “I knew she didn’t ought 
to go acwoss ve wiver, and I knew ve wegi- 
ment would come to me if I sent Jack home.” 

“You’re a hero, Winkie,” said Coppy — “a 
pukka hero !” 

“I don’t know what vat means,” said Wee 
Willie Winkie, “but you mustn’t call me Win- 
kie any more. I’m Percival Will’am Wil- 
l’ams.” 

And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie 
enter into his manhood. 



BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 














BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


Baa Baa, Black Sheep, 

Have you any wool? 

Yes, Sir, yes, Sir, three bags full. 

One for the Master, one for the Dame — 

None for the Little Boy that cries down the lane. 


— Nursery Rhyme. 


THE FIRST BAG. 


“When I was in my father’s house, I was in a better 
place.” 

HEY were putting Punch to bed — the ayah 



A and the hamal and Meeta, the big Surti 
boy with the red and gold turban. Judy, al- 
ready tucked inside her mosquito-curtains, was 
nearly asleep. Punch had been allowed to stay 
up for dinner. Many privileges had been ac- 
corded to Punch within the last ten days, and 
a greater kindness from the people of his world 
had encompassed his ways and works, which 
were mostly obstreperous. He sat on the edge 
of his bed and swung his bare legs defiantly. 

“Punch-frafra going to bye-lo?” said the 
ayah , suggestively. 


23 


24 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


“No,” said Punch. “Punch-fra&a wants the 
story about the Ranee that was turned into a 
tiger. Meeta must tell it, and the hamal shall 
hide behind the door and make tiger-noises at 
the proper time.” 

“But Judy -baba will wake up,” said the ayah. 

“Judy -baba is waking,” piped a small voice 
from the mosquito-curtains. “There was a 
Ranee that lived at Delhi. Go on, Meeta,” 
and she fell fast asleep again while Meeta be- 
gan the story. 

Never had Punch secured the telling of that 
tale with so little opposition. He reflected for 
a long time. The hamal made the tiger-noises 
in twenty different keys. 

“ ’Top!” said Punch, authoritatively. “Why 
doesn’t Papa come in and say he is going to 
give me put-put ?” 

“Vunoh-baba is going away,” said the ayah. 
“In another week there will be no Punch -baba 
to pull my hair any more.” She sighed softly, 
for the boy of the household was very dear to 
her heart. 

“Up the Ghauts in a train?” said Punch, 
standing on his bed. “All the way to Nassick 
where the Ranee-Tiger lives?” 

“Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib,” said 
Meeta, lifting him on his shoulder. “Down to 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


25 


the sea where the cocoanuts are thrown, and 
across the sea in a big ship. Will you take 
Meeta with you to Belait ?” 

“You shall all come,” said Punch, from the 
height of Meeta’s strong arms. “Meeta and 
the ayah and the hamal and Bhini-in-the-Gar- 
den, and the salaam-Captain-Sahib-snake- 
man.” 

There was no mockery in Meeta’s voice when 
he replied — “Great is the Sahib’s favor,” and 
laid the little man down in the bed, while the 
ayah, sitting in the moonlight at the doorway, 
lulled him to sleep with an interminable can- 
ticle such as they sing in the Roman Catholic 
Church at Parel. Punch curled himself into a 
ball and slept. 

Next morning Judy shouted that there was a 
rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell 
her the wonderful news. It did not much mat- 
ter, for Judy was only three and she would not 
have understood. But Punch was five; and he 
knew that going to England would be much 
nicer than a trip to Nassick. 

* * * * * * 

And Papa and Mamma sold the brougham 
and the piano, and stripped the house, and cur- 
tailed the allowance of crockery for the daily 


26 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


meals, and took long council together over a 
bundle of letters bearing the Rocklington post- 
mark. 

“The worst of it is that one can’t be certain 
of anything,” said Papa, pulling his moustache. 
“The letters in themselves are excellent, and the 
terms are moderate enough.” 

“The worst of it is that the children will 
grow up away from me,” thought Mamma: 
but she did not say it aloud. 

“We are only one case among hundreds,” 
said Papa, bitterly. “You shall go Home again 
in five years, dear.” 

“Punch will be ten then — and Judy eight. 
Oh, how long and long and long the time will 
be ! And we have to leave them among stran- 
gers.” 

“Punch is a cheery little chap. He’s sure to 
make friends wherever he goes.” 

“And who could help loving my Ju?” 

They were standing over the cots in the nurs- 
ery late at night, and I think that Mamma was 
crying softly. After Papa had gone away, she 
knelt down by the side of Judy’s cot. The 
ayah saw her and put up a prayer that the 
memsahib might never find the love of her 
children taken away from her and given to a 
stranger. 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


27 


Mamma’s own prayer was a slightly illogical 
one. Summarized it ran : — “Let strangers love 
my children and be as good to them as I should 
be, but let me preserve their love and their 
confidence forever and ever. Amen.” Punch 
scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned 
a little. That seems to be the only answer to 
the prayer : and, next day, they all went down 
to the sea, and there was a scene at the Apollo 
Bunder when Punch discovered that Meeta 
could not come too, and Judy learned that the 
ayah must be left behind. But Punch found a 
thousand fascinating things in the rope, block, 
and steam-pipe line on the big P. and O. 
Steamer, long before Meeta and the ayah had 
dried their tears. 

“Come back, Punch -baba” said the ayah. 

“Come back,” said Meeta, “and be a Burra 
Sahib A 

“Yes,” said Punch, lifted up in his father’s 
arms to wave good-bye. “Yes, I will come 
back, and I will be a Burra Sahib Baha dur!” 

At the end of the first day Punch demanded 
to be set down in England, which he was cer- 
tain must be close at hand. Next day there was 
a merry breeze, and Punch was very sick. 
“When I come back to Bombay,” said Punch 
on his recovery, “I will come by the road — in 


28 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


a broom -gharri. This is a very naughty ship.” 

The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he 
modified his opinions as the voyage went on. 
There was so much to see and to handle and 
ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot 
the ayah and Meeta and the hamal, and with 
difficulty remembered a few words of the 
Hindustani once his second-speech. 

But Judy was much worse. The day before 
the steamer reached Southampton, Mamma 
asked her if she would not like to see the ayah 
again. Judy’s blue eyes turned to the stretch 
of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past, and 
she said: “Ayah! What ayah?” 

Mamma cried over her and Punch marveled. 
It was then that he heard for the first time 
Mamma’s passionate appeal to him never to let 
Judy forget Mamma. Seeing that Judy was 
young, ridiculously young, and that Mamma, 
every evening for four weeks past, had come 
into the cabin to sing her and Punch to sleep 
with a mysterious rune that he called “Sonny, 
my soul,” Punch could not understand what 
Mamma meant. But he strove to do his duty ; 
for, the moment Mamma left the cabin, he said 
to Judy: “Ju, you bemember Mamma?” 

“ ’Torse I do,” said Judy. 

“Then always bemember Mamma, ’r else I 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


29 

won’t give you the paper ducks that the red- 
haired Captain Sahib cut out for me.” 

So Judy promised always to “bemember 
Mamma.” 

Many and many a time was Mamma’s com- 
mand laid upon Punch, and Papa would say the 
same thing with an insistence that awed the 
child. 

“You must make haste and learn to write, 
Punch,” said Papa, “and then you’ll be able to 
write letters to us in Bombay.” 

“I’ll come into your room,” said Punch, and 
Papa choked. 

Papa and Mamma were always choking in 
those days. If Punch took Judy to task for 
not “bemember ing,” they choked. If Punch 
sprawled, on the sofa in the Southampton lodg- 
ing-house and sketched his future in purple and 
gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put 
up her mouth for a kiss. 

Through many days all four were vagabonds 
on the face of the earth : — Punch with no one 
to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, 
and Papa and Mamma grave, distracted, and 
choking. 

“Where,” demanded Punch, wearied of a 
loathsome contrivance on four wheels with a 
mound of luggage atop — “where is our broom- 


30 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


gharri ? This thing talks so much that I can’t 
talk. Where is our own broom -gharri? When 
I was at Bandstand before we corned away, I 
asked Inverarity Sahib why he was sitting in 
it, and he said it was his own. And I said, T 
will give it you ’ — I like Inverarity Sahib — and 
I said, ‘Can you put your legs through the 
pully-wag loops by the windows?’ And In- 
verarity Sahib said No, and laughed. / can 
put my legs through the pully-wag loops. I 
can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. 
Look! Oh, Mamma’s crying again! I didn’t 
know. I wasn’t not to do so.” 

Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the 
four-wheeler: the door opened and he slid to 
the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door 
of an austere little villa whose gates bore the 
legend “Downe Lodge.” Punch gathered 
himself together and eyed the house with dis- 
favor. It stood on a sandy road, and a cold 
wind tickled his knickerbockered legs. 

“Let us go away,” said Punch. “This is not 
a pretty place.” 

But Mamma and Papa and Judy had Quitted 
the cab, and all the luggage was being taken 
into the house. At the doorstep stood a woman 
in black, and she smiled largely, with dry 
chapped lips. Behind her was a man, big, bony, 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


31 


grey, and lame as to one leg — behind him a boy 
of twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. 
Punch surveyed the trio, and advanced with- 
out fear, as he had been accustomed to do in 
Bombay when callers came and he happened to 
be playing in the veranda. 

“How do you do?” said he. “I am Punch.” 
But they were all looking at the luggage — all 
except the grey man, who shook hands with 
Punch and said he was “a smart little fellow.” 
There was much running about and banging of 
boxes, and Punch curled himself up on the 
sofa in the dining-room and considered things. 

“I don’t like these people,” said Punch. 
“But never mind. We’ll go away soon. We 
have always went away soon from everywhere. 
I wish we was gone back to Bombay soon ” 

The wish bore no fruit. For six days 
Mamma wept at intervals, and showed the 
woman in black all Punch’s clothes — a liberty 
which Punch resented. “But p’raps she’s a 
new white ayah,” he thought. “I’m to call 
her Antirosa, but she doesn’t call me Sahib. 
She says just Punch,” he confided to Judy. 
“What is Antirosa ?” 

Judy didn’t know. Neither she nor Punch 
had heard anything of an animal called an aunt. 
Their world had been Papa and Mamma, who 


32 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


knew everything, permitted everything, and 
loved everybody — even Punch when he used to 
go into the garden at Bombay and fill his nails 
with mould after the weekly nail-cutting, be- 
cause, as he explained between two strokes of 
the slipper to his sorely tried Father, his fingers 
“felt so new at the ends.” 

In an undefined way Punch judged it ad- 
visable to keep both parents between himself 
and the woman in black and the boy in black 
hair. He did not approve of them. He liked 
the grey man, who had expressed a wish to be 
called “Uncleharri.” They nodded at each 
other when they met, and the grey man showed 
him a little ship with rigging that took up and 
down. 

“She is a model of the Brisk — the little Brisk 
that was sore exposed that day at Navarino.” 
The grey man hummed the last words and fell 
into a reverie. “Pll tell you about Navarino, 
Punch, when we go for walks together; and 
you mustn’t touch the ship, because she’s the 
Brisk.” 

Long before that walk, the first of many, 
was taken, they roused Punch and Judy in the 
chill dawn of a February morning to say 
Good-bye; and of all people in the wide earth 
to Papa and Mamma — both crying this time. 
Punch was very sleepy and Judy was cross. 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


33 


“Don’t forget us,” pleaded Mamma. “Oh, 
my little son, don’t forget us, and see that Judy 
remembers too.” 

“I’ve told Judy to bemember,” said Punch, 
wriggling, for his father’s beard tickled his 
neck. “I’ve told Judy — ten — forty — ’leven 
thousand times. But Ju’s so young — quite a 
baby — isn’t she?” 

“Yes,” said Papa, “quite a baby, and you 
must be good to Judy, and make haste to learn 
to write and — and — and” . . . 

Punch was back in his bed again. Judy was 
fast asleep, and there was the rattle of a cab 
below. Papa and Mamma had gone away. 
Not to Nassick; that was across the sea. To 
some place much nearer, of course, and equally 
of course, they would return. They came 
back after dinner-parties, and Papa had come 
back after he had been to a place called “The 
Snows,” and Mamma with him, to Punch and 
Judy at Mrs. Inverarity’s house in Marine 
Lines. Assuredly they would come back again. 
So Punch fell asleep till the true morning, 
when the black-haired boy met him with the 
information that Papa and Mamma had gone 
to Bombay, and that he and Judy were to stay 
at Downe Lodge “forever.” Antirosa, tear- 
fully appealed to for a contradiction, said that 


34 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


Harry had spoken the truth, and that it be- 
hooved Punch to fold up his clothes neatly on 
going to bed. Punch went out and wept bit- 
terly with Judy, into whose fair head he had 
driven some ideas of the meaning of separation. 

When a matured man discovers that he has 
been deserted by Providence, deprived of his 
God, and cast without help, comfort, or sym- 
pathy, upon a world which is new and strange 
to him, his despair, which may find expression 
in evil-living, the writing of his experiences, or 
the more satisfactory diversion of suicide, is 
generally supposed to be impressive. A child, 
under exactly similar circumstances as far as 
its knowledge goes, cannot very well curse God 
and die. It howls till its nose is red, its eyes 
are sore, and its head aches. Punch and Judy, 
through no fault of their own, had lost all their 
world. They sat in the hall and cried ; the 
black-haired boy looking on from afar. 

The model of the ship availed nothing, 
though the grey man assured Punch that he 
might pull the rigging up and down as much as 
he pleased; and Judy was promised free entry 
into the kitchen. They wanted Papa and 
Mamma gone to Bombay beyond the seas, and 
their grief while it lasted was without remedy. 

When the tears ceased the house was very 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


35 


still. Antirosa had decided it was better to let 
the children “have their cry out,” and the boy 
had gone to school. Punch raised his head 
from the floor and sniffed mournfully. Judy 
was nearly asleep. Three short years had not 
taught her how to bear sorrow with full knowl- 
edge. There was a distant, dull boom in the 
air — a repeated heavy thud. Punch knew that 
sound in Bombay in the Monsoon. It was the 
sea — the sea that must be traversed before any 
one could get to Bombay. 

“Quick, Ju!” he cried, “we’re close to the 
sea. I can hear it! Listen! That’s where 
they’ve went. P’raps we can catch them if we 
was in time. They didn’t mean to go without 
us. They’ve only forgot.” 

“Iss,” said Judy. “They’ve only forgotted. 
Less go to the sea.” 

The hall-door was open and so was the gar- 
den-gate. 

“It’s very, very big, this place,” he said, 
looking cautiously down the road, “and we will 
get lost; but I will find a man and order him 
to take me back to my house — like I did in 
Bombay.” 

He took Judy by the hand, and the two fled 
hatless in the direction of the sound of the sea. 
Downe Lodge was almost the last of a range of 


36 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


newly built houses running out, through a 
chaos of brick-mounds, to a heath where 
gypsies occasionally camped and where the 
Garrison Artillery of Rocklington practised. 
There were few people to be seen, and the chil- 
dren might have been taken for those of the 
soldiery, who ranged far. Half an hour the 
wearied little legs tramped across heath, potato- 
field, and sand-dune. 

“I’se so tired,” said Judy, “and Mamma will 
be angry.” 

“Mamma’s never angry. I suppose she is 
waiting at the sea now while Papa gets tickets. 
We’ll find them and go along with. Ju, you 
mustn’t sit down. Only a little more and we’ll 
come to the sea. Ju, if you sit down I’ll thmack 
you!” said Punch. 

They climbed another dune, and came upon 
the great grey sea at low tide. Hundreds of 
crabs were scuttling about the beach, but there 
was no trace of Papa and Mamma, not even of 
a ship upon the waters — nothing but sand and 
mud for miles and miles. 

And “Uncleharri” found them by chance— 
very muddy and very forlorn— Punch dissolved 
in tears, but trying to divert Judy with an 
“ickle trab,” and Judy wailing to the pitiless 
horizon for “Mamma, Mamma!”— and again 
“Mamma !” 


THE SECOND BAG 


Ah, well-a-day, for we are souls bereaved! 

Of all the creatures under Heaven’s wide scope 
We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, 
And most beliefless, who had most believed. 

— The City of Dreadful Night. 

All this time not a word about Black Sheep. 
He came later, and Harry the black-haired boy 
was mainly responsible for his coming. 

Judy — who could help loving little Judy? — 
passed, by special permit, into the kitchen and 
thence straight to Aunty Rosa’s heart. Harry 
was Aunty Rosa’s one child, and Punch was 
the extra boy about the house. There was no 
special place for him or his little affairs, and 
he was forbidden to sprawl on sofas and ex- 
plain his ideas about the manufacture of this 
world and his hopes for his future. Sprawling 
was lazy and wore out sofas, and little boys 
were not expected to talk. They were talked 
to, and the talking to was intended for the bene- 
fit of their morals. As the unquestioned despot 
of the house at Bombay, Punch could not quite 
understand how he came to be of no account in 
this new life. 


38 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


Harry might reach across the table and take 
what he wanted: Judy might point and get 
what she wanted. Punch was forbidden to do 
either. The grey man was his great hope and 
stand-by for many months after Mamma and 
Papa left, and he had forgotten to tell Judy 
to “bemember Mamma.” 

This lapse was excusable, because in the in- 
terval he had been introduced by Aunty Rosa 
to two very impressive things — an abstraction 
called God, the intimate friend and ally of 
Aunty Rosa, generally believed to live behind 
the kitchen-range because it was hot there — 
and a dirty brown book filled with unintelligible 
dots and marks. Punch was always anxious to 
oblige everybody. He, therefore, welded the 
story of the Creation on to what he could recol- 
lect of his Indian fairy tales, and scandalized 
Aunty Rosa by repeating the result to Judy. 
It was a sin, a grievous sin, and Punch was 
talked to for a quarter of an hour. He could 
not understand where the iniquity came in, but 
was careful not to repeat the offence, because 
Aunty Rosa told him that God had heard every 
word he had said and was very angry. If this 
were true why didn’t God come and say so, 
thought Punch, and dismissed the matter from 
his mind. Afterward he learned to know the 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


39 


Lord as the only thing in the world more aw- 
ful than Aunty Rosa — as a Creature that stood 
in the background and counted the strokes of 
the cane. 

But the reading was, just then, a much 
more serious matter than any creed. Aunty 
Rosa sat him upon a table and told him that 
A B meant ab. 

“Why?” said Punch. “A is a and B is bee. 
Why does A B mean ab?” 

“Because I tell you it does,” said Aunty 
Rosa, “and you’ve got to say it.” 

Punch said it accordingly, and for a month, 
hugely against his will, stumbled through the 
brown book, not in the least comprehending 
what it meant. But Uncle Harry, who walked 
much and generally alone, was wont to come 
into the nursery and suggest to Aunty Rosa 
that Punch should walk with him. He seldom 
spoke, but he showed Punch all Rocklington, 
from the mud-banks and the sand of the back- 
bay to the great harbors where ships lay at 
anchor, and the dockyards where the hammers 
were never still, and the marine-store shops, 
and the shiny brass counters in the Offices 
where Uncle Harry went once every three 
months with a slip of blue paper and received 
sovereigns in exchange; for he held a wound- 


40 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


pension. Punch heard, too, from his lips the 
story of the battle of Navarino, where the 
sailors of the Fleet, for three days afterward, 
were deaf as posts and could only sign to each 
other. “That was because of the noise of the 
guns,” said Uncle Harry, “and I have got the 
wadding of a bullet somewhere inside me 
now.” 

Punch regarded him with curiosity. He 
had not the least idea what wadding was, and 
his notion of a bullet was a dockyard cannon- 
ball bigger than his own head. How could 
Uncle Harry keep a cannon-ball inside him? 
He was ashamed to ask, for fear Uncle Harry 
might be angry. 

Punch had never known what anger — real 
anger — meant until one terrible day when 
Harry had taken his paint-box to paint a boat 
with, and Punch had protested with a loud and 
lamentable voice. Then Uncle Harry had ap- 
peared on the scene and, muttering something 
about “strangers’ children,” had with a stick 
smitten the black-haired boy across the should- 
ers till he wept and yelled, and Aunty Rosa 
came in and abused Uncle Harry for cruelty to 
his own flesh and blood, and Punch shuddered 
to the tips of his shoes. “It wasn’t my fault,” 
he explained to the boy, but both Harry and 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


41 


Aunty Rosa said that it was, and that Punch 
had told tales, and for a week there were no 
more walks with Uncle Harry. 

But that week brought a great joy to Punch. 

He had repeated till he was thrice weary the 
statement that “the Cat lay on the Mat and the 
Rat came in.” 

“Now I can truly read,” said Punch, “and 
now I will never read anything in the world.” 

He put the brown book in the cupboard 
where his school-books lived and accidentally 
tumbled out a venerable volume, without 
covers, labelled Sharpe’s Magazine. There 
was the most portentous picture of a griffin 
on the first page, with verses below. The Grif- 
fin carried off one sheep a day from a German 
village, till a man came with a “falchion” and 
split the griffin open. Goodness only knew 
what a falchion was, but there was the Griffin, 
and his history was an improvement upon the 
eternal Cat. 

“This,” said Punch, “means things, and now 
I will know all about everything in all the 
world.” He read till the light failed, not un- 
derstanding a tithe of the meaning, but tantal- 
ized by glimpses of new worlds hereafter to be 
revealed. 

“What is a ‘falchion’ ? What is a ‘e-wee 


42 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


lamb’ ? What is a ‘base imurper’ ? What is a 
‘verdant me-ad’ ?” he demanded, with flushed 
cheeks, at bedtime, of the astonished Aunty 
Rosa. 

“Say your prayers and go to sleep,” she re- 
plied, and that was all the help Punch then or 
afterward found at her hands in the new and 
delightful exercise of reading. 

“Aunty Rosa only knows about God and 
things like that,” argued Punch. “Uncle 
Harry will tell me.” 

The next walk proved that Uncle Harry 
could not help either; but he allowed Punch to 
talk, and even sat down on a bench to hear 
about the Griflin. Other walks brought other 
stories as Punch ranged further afield, for the 
house held large store of old books that no one 
ever opened — from Frank Fairlegh in serial 
numbers, and the earlier poems of Tennyson, 
contributed anonymously to Sharpe’s Maga- 
zine, to ’62 Exhibition Catalogues, gay with 
colors and delightfully incomprehensible, and 
odd leaves of Gulliver’s Travels. 

As soon as Punch could string a few pot- 
hooks together, he wrote to Bombay, demand- 
ing by return of post “all the books in all the 
world.” Papa could not comply with this 
modest indent, but sent Grimm’s Fairy Tales 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


43 


and a Hans Andersen. That was enough. If 
he were only left alone Punch could pass, at 
any hour he chose, into a land of his own, be- 
yond the reach of Aunty Rosa and her God, 
Harry and his teasements, and Judy’s claims 
to be played with. 

“Don’t disturb me, I’m reading. Go and 
play in the kitchen,” grunted Punch. “Aunty 
Rosa lets you go there.” Judy was cutting 
her second teeth and was fretful. She ap- 
pealed to Aunty Rosa, who descended on 
Punch. 

“I was reading,” he explained, “reading a 
book. I want to read.” 

“You’re only doing that to show off,” said 
Aunty Rosa. “But we’ll see. Play with Judy 
now, and don’t open a book for a week.” 

Judy did not pass a very enjoyable playtime 
with Punch, who was consumed with indigna- 
tion. There was a pettiness at the bottom of 
the prohibition which puzzled him. 

“It’s what I like to do,” he said, “and she’s 
found out that and stopped me. Don’t cry, 
Ju — it wasn’t your fault — please don’t cry, or 
she’ll say I made you.” 

Ju loyally mopped up her tears, and the two 
played in their nursery, a room in the base- 


44 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


ment and half underground, to which they 
were regularly sent after the midday dinner 
while Aunty Rosa slept. She drank wine — 
that is to say, something from a bottle in the 
cellaret — for her stomach’s sake, but if she 
did not fall asleep she would sometimes come 
into the nursery to see that the children were 
really playing. Now bricks, wooden hoops, 
ninepins, and chinaware cannot amuse forever, 
especially when all Fairyland is to be won by 
the mere opening of a book, and, as often as 
not, Punch would be discovered reading to 
Judy or telling her interminable tales. That 
was an offence in the eyes of the law, and Judy 
would be whisked off by Aunty Rosa, while 
Punch was left to play alone, “and be sure that 
I hear you doing it.” 

It was not a cheering employ, for he had to 
make a playful noise. At last, with infinite 
craft, he devised an arrangement whereby the 
table could be supported as to three legs on 
toy bricks, leaving the fourth clear to bring 
down on the floor. He could work the table 
with one hand and hold a book with the other. 
This he did till an evil day when Aunty Rosa 
pounced upon him unawares and told him that 
he was “acting a lie.” 

“If you’re old enough to do that,” she said 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


45 


— her temper was always worse after dinner 
— “you’re old enough to be beaten.” 

“But — I’m — I’m not a animal !” said Punch, 
aghast. He remembered Uncle Harry and the 
stick, and turned white. Aunty Rosa had 
hidden a light cane behind her, and Punch was 
beaten then and there over the shoulders. It 
was a revelation to him. The room-door was 
shut, and he was left to weep himself into re- 
pentance and work out his own Gospel of Life. 

Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to 
beat him with many stripes. It was unjust and 
cruel, and Mamma and Papa would never 
have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as Aunty 
Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret or- 
ders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. 
It would be discreet in the future to propitiate 
Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters 
in which he was innocent, he had been accused 
of wishing to “show off.” He had “shown 
off” before visitors when he had attacked a 
strange gentleman — Harry’s uncle, not his 
own — with requests for information about the 
Griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature 
of the Tilbury in which Frank Fairlegh rode 
— all points of paramount interest which he 
was bursting to understand. Clearly it would 
not do to pretend to care for Aunty Rosa. 


46 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


At this point Harry entered and stood afar 
off, eyeing Punch, a disheveled heap in the 
corner of the room, with disgust. 

“You're a liar — a young liar," said Harry, 
with great unction, “and you’re to have tea 
down here because you’re not fit to speak to us. 
And you’re not to speak to Judy again till 
Mother gives you leave. You’ll corrupt ,her. 
You’re only fit to associate with the servant. 
Mother says so.’’ 

Having reduced Punch to a second agony 
of tears, Harry departed upstairs with the 
news that Punch was still rebellious. 

Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining- 
room. “Damn it all, Rosa,’’ said he, at last, 
“can’t you leave the child alone ? He’s a good 
enough little chap when I meet him.’’ 

“He puts on his best manners with you, 
Henry,’’ said Aunty Rosa, “but Pm afraid, 
Pm very much afraid, that he is the Black 
Sheep of the family.’’ 

Harry heard and stored up the name for fu- 
ture use. Judy cried till she was bidden to 
stop, her brother not being worth tears; and 
the evening concluded with the return of 
Punch to the upper regions and a private sit- 
ting at which all the blinding horrors of Hell 
were revealed to Punch with such store of im- 
agery as Aunty Rosa’s narrow mind possessed. 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


47 


Most grievous of all was Judy’s round-eyed 
reproach, and Punch went to bed in the depths 
of the Valley of Humiliation. He shared his 
room with Harry and knew the torture in 
store. For an hour and a half he had to an- 
swer that young gentleman’s questions as to his 
motives for telling a lie, and a grievous lie, the 
precise quantity of punishment inflicted by 
Aunty Rosa, and had also to profess his deep 
gratitude for such religious instruction as 
Harry thought fit to impart. 

From that day began the downfall of 
Punch, now Black Sheep. 

“Untrustworthy in one thing, untrust- 
worthy in all,” said Aunty Rosa, and Harry 
felt that Black Sheep was delivered into his 
hands. He would wake him up in the night to 
ask him why he was such a liar. 

“I don’t know,” Punch would reply. 

“Then don’t you think you ought to get up 
and pray to God for a new heart?” 

“Y-yess.” 

“Get out and pray, then!” And Punch 
would get out of bed with raging hate in his 
heart against all the world, seen and unseen. 
He was always tumbling into trouble. Harry 
had a knack of cross-examining him as to his 
day’s doings, which seldom failed to lead him, 


48 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


sleepy and savage, into half a dozen contradic- 
tions — all duly reported to Aunty Rosa next 
morning. 

“But it wasn't a lie,” Punch would begin, 
charging into a labored explanation that 
landed him more hopelessly in the mire. “I 
said that I didn’t say my prayers twice over in 
the day, and that was on Tuesday. Once I 
did. I know I did, but Harry said I didn’t,” 
and so forth, till the tension brought tears, and 
he was dismissed from the table in disgrace. 

“You usen’t to be as bad as this?” said Judy, 
awe-stricken at the catalogue of Black Sheep’s 
crimes. “Why are you so bad now?” 

“I don’t know,” Black Sheep would reply. 
“I’m not, if I only wasn’t bothered upside 
down. I knew what I did, and I want to say 
so; but Harry always makes it out different 
somehow, and Aunty Rosa doesn’t believe a 
word I say. Oh, Ju! don’t you say I’m bad 
too.” 

“Aunty Rosa says you are,” said Judy. 
“She told the Vicar so when he came yester- 
day.” 

“Why does she tell all the people outside the 
house about me? It isn’t fair,” said Black 
Sheep. “When I was in Bombay, and was 
bad — doing bad, not made-up bad like this — 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


49 


Mamma told Papa, and Papa told me he knew, 
and that was all. Outside people didn’t know 
too — even Meeta didn’t know.” 

“I don’t remember,” said Judy, wistfully. 
“I was all little then. Mamma was just as 
fond of you as she was of me, wasn’t she?” 

“ ’Course she was. So was Papa. So was 
everybody.” 

“Aunty Rosa likes me more than she does 
you. She says that you are a Trial and a 
Black Sheep, and I’m not to speak to you more 
than I can help.” 

“Always? Not outside of the times when 
you mustn’t speak to me at all ?” 

Judy nodded her head mournfully. Black 
Sheep turned away in despair, but Judy’s arms 
were round his neck. 

“Never mind, Punch,” she whispered. “I 
will speak to .you just the same as ever and 
ever. You’re my own brother though you are 
— though Aunty Rosa says you’re Bad, and 
Harry says you’re a little coward. He says 
that if I pulled you hair hard, you’d cry.” 

“Pull, then,” said Punch. 

Judy pulled gingerly. 

“Pull harder — as hard as you can! There! 
I don’t mind how much you pull it nozv. If 
you’ll speak to me same as ever I’ll let you pull 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


it as much as you like — pull it out if you like. 
But I know if Harry came and stood by and 
made you do it I’d cry.” 

So the two children sealed the compact with 
a kiss, and Black Sheep’s heart was cheered 
within him, and by extreme caution and care- 
ful avoidance of Harry he acquired virtue, and 
was allowed to read undisturbed for a week. 
Uncle Harry took him for walks and consoled 
him with rough tenderness, never calling him 
Black Sheep. “It’s good for you, I suppose, 
Punch,” he used to say. “Let us sit down. 
I’m getting tired.” His steps led him now not 
to the beach, but to the Cemetery of Rockling- 
ton, amid the potato-fields. For hours the grey 
man would sit on a tombstone, while Black 
Sheep read epitaphs, and then with a sigh 
would stump home again. 

“I shall lie there soon,” said he to Black 
Sheep, one winter evening, when his face 
showed white as a worn silver coin under the 
lights of the chapel-lodge. “You needn’t tell 
Aunty Rosa.” 

A month later, he turned sharp round, ere 
half a morning walk was completed, and 
stumped back to the house. “Put me to bed, 
Rosa,” he muttered. “I’ve walked my last. 
The wadding has found me out.” 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


5i 


They put him to bed, and for a fortnight 
the shadow of his sickness lay upon the house, 
and Black Sheep went to and fro unobserved. 
Papa had sent him some new books, and he 
was told to keep quiet. He retired into his 
own world, and was perfectly happy. Even at 
night his felicity was unbroken. He could lie 
in bed and string himself tales of travel and 
adventure while Harry was downstairs. 

“Uncle Harry’s going to die,” said Judy, 
who now lived almost entirely with Aunty 
Rosa. 

“I’m very sorry,” said Black Sheep, soberly. 
“He told me that a long time ago.” 

Aunty Rosa heard the conversation. “Will 
nothing check your wicked tongue?” she said 
angrily. There were blue circles round her 
eyes. 

Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and 
read “Cometh up as a flower” with deep and 
uncomprehending interest. He had been for- 
bidden to read it on account of its “sinful- 
ness,” but the bonds of the Universe were 
crumbling, and Aunty Rosa was in great grief. 

“I’m glad,” said Black Sheep. “She’s un- 
happy now. It wasn’t a lie, though. / knew. 
He told me not to tell.” 

That night Black Sheep woke wth a start. 


52 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


Harry was not in the room, and there was a 
sound of sobbing on the next floor. Then the 
voice of Uncle Harry, singing the song of 
the Battle of Navarino, cut through the dark- 
ness : 


“Our vanship was the Asia — 
The Albion and Genoa!” 


“He’s getting well,” thought Black Sheep, 
who knew the song through all its seventeen 
verses. But the blood froze at his little heart 
as he thought. The voice leaped an octave and 
rang shrill as a boatswain’s pipe : 

“And next came on the lovely Rose, 

The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed, 

And the little Brisk was sore exposed 
That day at Navarino.” 

“That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry!” 
shouted Black Sheep, half wild with excite- 
ment and fear of he knew not what. 

A door opened and Aunty Rosa screamed 
up the staircase: — “Hush! For God’s sake 
hush, you little devil. Uncle Harry is dead!” 


THE THIRD BAG. 


Journeys end in lovers’ meeting, 
Every wise man’s son doth know. 


“I wonder what will happen to me now,” 
thought Black Sheep, when the semi-pagan 
rites peculiar to the burial of the Dead in mid- 
dle-class houses had been accomplished, and 
Aunty Rosa, awful in black crape, had re- 
turned to this life. “I don’t think I’ve done 
anything bad that she knows of. I suppose I 
will soon. She will be very cross after Uncle 
Harry’s dying, and Harry will be cross too. 
I’ll keep in the nursery.” 

Unfortunately for Punch’s plans, it was de- 
cided that he should be sent to a day-school 
which Harry attended. This meant a morning 
walk with Harry, and perhaps an evening one ; 
but the prospect of freedom in the interval 
was refreshing. “Harry ’ll tell everything I 
do, but I won’t do anything,” said Black 
Sheep. Fortified with this virtuous resolution, 
he went to school only to find that Harry’s 
version of his character had preceded him, and 
that life was a burden in consequence. He 


54 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


took stock of his associates. Some of them 
were unclean, some of them talked in dialect, 
many dropped their h’s, and there were two 
Jews and a negro, or some one quite as dark, 
in the assembly. “That’s a hubshi,” said Black 
Sheep to himself. “Even Meeta used to laugh 
at a hubshi . I don’t think this is a proper 
place.” He was indignant for at least an hour, 
till he reflected that any expostulation on his 
part would be by Aunty Rosa construed into 
“showing off,” and that Harry would tell the 
boys. 

“How do you like school?” said Aunty 
Rosa, at the end of the day. 

“I think it is a very nice place,” said Punch, 
quietly. 

“I suppose you warned the boys of Black 
Sheep’s character ?” said Aunty Rosa to 
Harry. 

“Oh, yes,” said the censor of Black Sheep’s 
morals. “They know all about him.” 

“If I was with my father,” said Black 
Sheep, stung to the quick, “I shouldn’t speak 
to those boys. He wouldn’t let me. They live 
in shops. I saw them go into shops — where 
their fathers live and sell things.” 

“You’re too good for that school, are you?” 
said Aunty Rosa, with a bitter smile. “You 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


55 


ought to be grateful. Black Sheep, that those 
boys speak to you at all. It isn’t every school 
that takes little liars.” 

Harry did not fail to make much capital out 
of Black Sheep’s ill-considered remark; with 
the result that several boys, including the hub- 
ski, demonstrated to Black Sheep the eternal 
equality of the human race by smacking his 
head, and his consolation from Aunty Rosa 
was that it “served him right for being vain.” 
He learned, however, to keep his opinions to 
himself, and by propitiating Harry in carrying 
books and the like to secure a little peace. His 
existence was not too joyful. From nine till 
twelve he was at school, and from two to four, 
except on Saturdays. In the evenings he was 
sent down into the nursery to prepare his les- 
sons for the next day, and every night came 
the dreaded cross-questionings at Harry’s 
hand. Of Judy he saw but little. She was 
deeply religious — at six years of age Religion 
is easy to come by — and sorely divided be- 
tween her natural love for Black Sheep and 
her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do no 
wrong. 

The lean woman returned that love with in- 
terest, and Judy, when she dared, took advan- 
tage of this for the remission of Black Sheep’s 


56 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


penalties. Failures in lessons at school were 
punished at home by a week without reading 
other than school-books, and Harry brought 
the news of such a failure with glee. Further, 
Black Sheep was then bound to repeat his les- 
sons at bedtime to Harry, who generally suc- 
ceeded in making him break down, and con- 
soled him by gloomiest forebodings for the 
morrow. Harry was at once spy, practical 
joker, inquisitor, and Aunty Rosa’s deputy ex- 
ecutioner. He filled his many posts to admira- 
tion. From his actions, now that Uncle Harry 
was dead, there was no appeal. Black Sheep 
had not been permitted to keep any self-respect 
at school: at home he was of course utterly 
discredited, and grateful for any pity that the 
servant girls — they changed frequently at 
Downe Lodge because they, too, were liars — 
might show. “You’re just fit to row in the 
same boat with Black Sheep,” was a senti- 
ment that each new Jane or Eliza might expect 
to hear, before a month was over, from Aunty 
Rosa’s lips ; and Black Sheep was used to ask 
new girls whether they had yet been compared 
to him. Harry was “Master Harry” in their 
mouths; Judy was officially “Miss Judy”; but 
Black Sheep was never anything more than 
Black Sheep tout court. 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


57 


As time went on and the memory of Papa 
and Mamma became wholly overlaid by the 
unpleasant task of writing them letters, under 
Aunty Rosa’s eye, each Sunday, Black Sheep 
forgot what manner of life he had led in the 
beginning of things. Even Judy’s appeals to 
“try and remember about Bombay” failed to 
quicken him. 

“I can’t remember,” he said. “I know I 
used to give orders and Mamma kissed me.” 

“Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good,” 
pleaded Judy. 

“Ugh ! I don’t want to be kissed by Aunty 
Rosa. She’d say I was doing it to get some- 
thing more to eat.” 

The weeks lengthened into months, and the 
holidays came; but just before the holidays 
Black Sheep fell into deadly sin. 

Among the many boys whom Harry had in- 
cited to “punch Black Sheep’s head because 
he daren’t hit back,” was one more aggravat- 
ing than the rest, who, in an unlucky moment, 
fell upon Black Sheep when Harry was not 
near. The blows stung, and Black Sheep 
struck back at random with all the power at 
his command. The boy dropped and whim- 
pered. Black Sheep was astounded at his own 


58 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


act, but, feeling the unresisting body under 
him, shook it with both his hands in blind fury 
and then began to throttle his enemy; meaning 
honestly to slay him. There was a scuffle, and 
Black Sheep was torn off the body by Harry 
and some colleagues, and cuffed home tingling 
but exultant. Aunty Rosa was out; pending 
her arrival, Harry set himself to lecture Black 
Sheep on the sin of murder — which he de- 
scribed as the offence of Cain. 

“ Why didn’t you fight him fair ? What did 
you hit him when he was down for, you little 
cur?” 

Black Sheep looked up at Harry’s throat 
and then at a knife on the dinner-table. 

“I don’t understand,” he said, wearily. 
“You always set him on me and told me I was 
a coward when I blubbed. Will you leave me 
alone until Aunty Rosa comes in? She’ll beat 
me if you tell her I ought to be beaten ; so it’s 
all right.” 

“It’s all wrong,” said Harry, magisterially. 
“You nearly killed him, and I shouldn’t won- 
der if he dies.” 

“Will he die?” said Black Sheep. 

“I dare say,” said Harry, “and then you’ll 
be hanged.” 

“All right,” said Black Sheep, possessing 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


59 


himself of the table-knife. “Then I’ll kill you 
now. You says things and do things and 
. . . and I don’t know how things happen, 

and you never leave me alone — and I don’t 
care what happens!” 

He ran at the boy with the knife, and Harry 
fled upstairs to his room, promising Black 
Sheep the finest thrashing in the world when 
Aunty Rosa returned. Black Sheep sat at the 
bottom of the stairs, the table-knife in his 
hand, and wept for that he had not killed 
Harry. The servant-girl came up from the 
kitchen, took the knife away, and consoled 
him. But Black Sheep was beyond consola- 
tion. He would be badly beaten by Aunty 
Rosa; then there would be another beating at 
Harry’s hand; then Judy would not be allowed 
to speak to him; then the tale would be told at 
school and then . . . 

There was no one to help and no one to care, 
and the best way out of the business was by 
death. A knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa 
had told him a year ago, that if he sucked 
paint he would die. He went into the nursery, 
unearthed the now disused Noah’s Ark, and 
sucked the paint off as many animals as re- 
mained. It tasted abominable, but he had 
licked Noah’s Dove clean by the time Aunty 


6o 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


Rosa and Judy returned. He went upstairs 
and greeted them with : “Please, Aunty Rosa, 
I believe I’ve nearly killed a boy at school, and 
I’ve tried to kill Harry, and when you’ve done 
all about God and Hell, will you beat me and 
get it over?” 

The tale of the assault as told by Harry could 
only be explained on the ground of possession 
by the Devil. Wherefore Black Sheep was not 
only most excellently beaten, once by Aunty 
Rosa and once, when thoroughly cowed down, 
by Harry, but he was further prayed for at 
family prayers, together with Jane, who had 
stolen a cold rissole from the pantry and 
snuffled audibly as her enormity was brought 
before the Throne of Grace. Black Sheep was 
sore and stiff but triumphant. He would die 
that very night and be rid of them all. No, he 
would ask for no forgiveness from Harry, and 
at bedtime would stand no questioning at 
Harry’s hands, even though addressed as 
“Young Cain.” 

“I’ve been beaten,” said he, “and I’ve done 
other things. I don’t care what I do. If you 
speak to me to-night, Harry, I’ll get out and 
try to kill you. Now you can kill me if you 
like.” 

Harry took his bed into the spare-room, and 
Black Sheep lay down to die. 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


61 


It may be that the makers of Noah’s Arks 
know that their animals are likely to find their 
way into young mouths, and paint them ac- 
cordingly. Certain it is that the common, 
weary next morning broke through the win- 
dows and found Black Sheep quite well and 
a good deal ashamed of himself, but richer by 
the knowledge that he could, in extremity, se- 
cure himself against Harry for the future. 

When he descended to breakfast on the first 
day of the holidays, he was greeted with the 
news that Harry, Aunty Rosa, and Judy were 
going away to Brighton, while Black Sheep 
was to stay in the house with the servant. His 
latest outbreak suited Aunty Rosa’s plans ad- 
mirably. It gave her good excuse for leaving 
the extra boy behind. Papa in Bombay, who 
really seemed to know a young sinner’s wants 
to the hour, sent, that week, a package of new 
books. And with these, and the society of 
Jane on board-wages, Black Sheep was left 
alone for a month. 

The books lasted for ten days. They were 
eaten too quickly, in long gulps of four and 
twenty hours at a time. Then came days of 
doing absolutely nothing, of dreaming dreams 
and marching imaginary armies up and down 
stairs, of counting the number of banisters, 


62 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


and of measuring the length and breadth of 
every room in handspans — fifty down the side, 
thirty across, and fifty back again. Jane made 
many friends, and, after receiving Black 
Sheep’s assurance that he would not tell of her 
absences, went out daily for long hours. 
Black Sheep would follow the rays of the sink- 
ing sun from the kitchen to the dining-room 
and thence upward to his own bed-room until 
all was grey dark, and he ran down to the 
kitchen fire and read by its light. He was 
happy in that he was left alone and could read 
as much as he pleased. But, later, he grew 
afraid of the shadows of window-curtains and 
the flapping of doors and the creaking of shut- 
ters. He went out into the garden, and the 
rustling of the laurel-bushes frightened him. 

He was glad when they all returned — Aunty 
Rosa, Harry, and Judy — full of news, and 
Judy laden with gifts. Who could help loving 
loyal little Judy? In return for all her merry 
babblement, Black Sheep confided to her that 
the distance from the hall-door to the top of 
the first landing was exactly one hundred and 
eighty-four handspans. He had found it out 
himself. 

Then the old life recommenced; but with a 
difference, and a new sin. To his other iniqui- 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 63 


ties Black Sheep had now added a phenomenal 
clumsiness — was as unfit to trust in action as 
he was in word. He himself could not ac- 
count for spilling everything he touched, up- 
setting glasses as he put his hand out, and 
bumping his head against doors that were 
manifestly shut. There was a grey haze upon 
all his world, and it narrowed month by 
month, until at last it left Black Sheep almost 
alone with the flapping curtains that were so 
like ghosts, and the nameless terrors of broad 
daylight that were only coats on pegs after all. 

Holidays came and holidays went and Black 
Sheep was taken to see many people whose 
faces were all exactly alike; was beaten when 
occasion demanded, and tortured by Harry on 
all possible occasions; but defended by Judy 
through good and evil report, though she 
hereby drew upon herself the wrath of Aunty 
Rosa. 

The weeks were interminable and Papa and 
Mamma were clean forgotten. Harry had 
left school and was a clerk in a Banking-Office. 
Freed from his presence, Black Sheep resolved 
that he should no longer be deprived of his al- 
lowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently 
when he failed at school he reported that all 
was well, and conceived a large contempt for 


64 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to de- 
ceive her. “She says Em a little liar when I 
don’t tell lies, and now I do, she doesn’t 
know,” thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa 
had credited him in the past with petty cun- 
ning and stratagem that had never entered 
into his head. By the light of the sordid 
knowledge that she had revealed to him he 
paid her back full tale. In a household where 
the most innocent of his motives, his natural 
yearning for a little affection, had been inter- 
preted into a desire for more bread and jam 
or to ingratiate himself with strangers and so 
put Harry into the background, his work was 
easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain 
kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. He set his 
child’s wits against hers and was no more 
beaten. It grew monthly more and more of a 
trouble to read the school-books, and even the 
pages of the open-print story-books danced 
and were dim. So Black Sheep brooded in the 
shadows that fell about him and cut him off 
from the world, inventing horrible punish- 
ments for “dear Harry,” or plotting another 
line of the tangled web of deception that he 
wrapped round Aunty Rosa. 

Then the crash came and the cobwebs were 
broken. It was impossible to foresee every- 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 65 


thing. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries 
as to Black Sheep’s progress and received in- 
formation that startled her. Step by step, 
with a delight as keen as when she convicted 
an underfed housemaid of the theft of cold 
meats, she followed the trail of Black Sheep’s 
delinquencies. For weeks and weeks, in or- 
der to escape banishment from the book- 
shelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of 
Harry, of God, of all the world! Horrible, 
most horrible, and evidence of an utterly de- 
praved mind. 

Black Sheep counted the cost. “It will only 
be one big beating and then she’ll put a card 
with ‘Liar’ on my back, same as she did be- 
fore. Harry will whack me and pray for me, 
and she will pray for me at prayers and tell 
me I’m a Child of the Devil and give me 
hymns to learn. But I’ve done all my reading 
and she never knew. She’ll say she knew all 
along. She’s an old liar too,” said he. 

For three days Black Sheep was shut in his 
own bedroom — to prepare his hea *t. “That 
means two beatings. One at school and one 
here. That one will hurt most.” And it fell 
even as he thought. He was thrashed at 
school before the Jews and the huhshi, for the 
heinous crime of bringing home false reports 


66 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


of progress. He was thrashed at home by 
Aunty Rosa on the same count, and then the 
placard was produced. Aunty Rosa stitched 
it between his shoulders and bade him go for 
a walk with it upon him. 

“If you make me do that,” said Black Sheep, 
very quietly, “I shall burn this house down, 
and perhaps Pll kill you. I don’t know 
whether I can kill you — you’re so bony — but 
I’ll try.” 

No punishment followed this blasphemy, 
though Black Sheep held himself ready to 
work his way to Aunty Rosa’s withered throat, 
and grip there till he was beaten off. Perhaps 
Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep, hav- 
ing reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself 
with a new recklessness. 

In the midst of all the trouble there came a 
visitor from over the seas to Downe Lodge, 
who knew Papa and Mamma, and was com- 
missioned to see Punch and Judy. Black 
Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and 
charged into a solid tea-table laden with china. 

“Gently, gently, little man,” said the visitor, 
turning Black Sheep’s face to the light, slowly. 
“What’s that big bird on the palings ?” 

“What bird?” asked Black Sheep. 

The visitor looked deep down into Black 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 67 


Sheep’s eyes for half a minute, and then said, 
suddenly : — “Good God, the little chap’s nearly 
blind !” 

It was a most business-like visitor. He 
gave orders, on his own responsibility, that 
Black Sheep was not to go to school or open 
a book until Mamma came home. “She’ll be 
here in three weeks, as you know of course,” 
said he, “and I’m Inverarity Sahib. I ushered 
you into this wicked world, young man, and a 
nice use you seem to have made of your time. 
You must do nothing whatever. Can you do 
that ?” 

“Yes,” said Punch, in a dazed way. He 
had known that Mamma was coming. There 
was a chance, then, of another beating. Thank 
Heaven, Papa wasn’t coming too. Aunty 
Rosa had said of late that he ought to be 
beaten by a man. 

For the next three weeks Black Sheep was 
strictly allowed to do nothing. He spent his 
time in the old nursery looking at the broken 
toys, for all of which account must be ren- 
dered to Mamma. Aunty Rosa hit him over 
the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. 
But that sin was of small importance compared 
to the other revelations, so darkly hinted at by 
Aunty Rosa. “When your Mother comes, and 


68 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


hears what I have to tell her, she may appre- 
ciate you properly,” she said, grimly, and 
mounted guard over Judy lest that small 
maiden should attempt to comfort her brother, 
to the peril of her own soul. 

And Mamma came — in a four-wheeler and 
a flutter of tender excitement. Such a 
Mamma! She was young, frivolously young, 
and beautiful, with delicately flushed cheeks, 
eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that 
needed no additional appeal of outstretched 
arms to draw little ones to her heart. Judy 
ran straight to her, but Black Sheep hesitated. 
Could this wonder be “showing off”? She 
would not put out her arms when she knew of 
his crimes. Meantime was it possible that by 
fondling she wanted to get anything out of 
Black Sheep? Only all his love and all his 
confidence ; but that Black Sheep did not know. 
Aunty Rosa withdrew and left Mamma, kneel- 
ing between her children, half laughing, half 
crying, in the very hall where Punch and Judy 
had wept five years before. 

“Well, chicks, do you remember me?” 

“No,” said Judy, frankly, “but I said ‘God 
bless Papa and Mamma/ ev’vy night.” 

“A little,” said Black Sheep. “Remember I 
wrote to you every week, anyhow. That isn’t 









Copyright, 1909, by The Edinburgh Society 





BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 69 

to show off, but ’cause of what comes after- 
ward.” 

“What comes after! What should come 
after, my darling boy ?” And she drew him to 
her again. He came awkwardly, with many 
angles. “Not used to petting,” said the quick 
Mother-soul. “The girl is.” 

“She’s too little to hurt any one,” thought 
Black Sheep, “and if I said I’d kill her, she’d 
be afraid. I wonder what Aunty Rosa will 
tell.” 

There was a constrained late dinner, at the 
end of which Mamma picked up Judy and put 
her to bed with endearments manifold. Faith- 
less little Judy had shown her defection from 
Aunty Rosa already. And that lady resented 
it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the 
room. 

“Come and say good-night,” said Aunty 
Rosa, offering a withered cheek. 

“Huh!” said Black Sheep. “I never kiss 
you, and I’m not going to show off. Tell that 
woman what I’ve done, and see what she 
says.” 

Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that 
he had lost Heaven after a glimpse through 
the gates. In half an hour “that woman” was 
bending over him. Black Sheep flung up his 


70 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


right arm. It wasn’t fair to come and hit him 
in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried 
that. But no blow followed. 

“Are you showing off? I won’t tell you 
anything more than Aunty Rosa has, and she 
doesn’t know everything,” said Black Sheep as 
clearly as he could for the arms round his 
neck. 

“Oh my son — my little, little son! It was 
my fault — my fault, darling — and yet how 
could we help it? Forgive me, Punch.” The 
voice died out in a broken whisper, and two 
hot tears fell on Black Sheep’s forehead. 

“Has she been making you cry too?” he 
asked. “You should see Jane cry. But you’re 
nice, and Jane is a Born Liar — Aunty Rosa 
says so.” 

“Hush, Punch, hush! My boy, don’t talk 
like that. Try to love me a little bit — a little 
bit. You don’t how how I want it. Punch- 
baba, come back to me ! I am your Mother — 
your own Mother — and never mind the rest. 
I know — yes, I know, dear. It doesn’t matter 
now. Punch, won’t you care for me a little?” 

It is astonishing how much petting a big 
boy of ten can endure when he is quite sure 
that there is no one to laugh at him. Black 
Sheep had never been made much of before, 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


7i 


and here was this beautiful woman treating 
him — Black Sheep, the Child of the Devil and 
the Inheritor of the Undying Flame — as 
though he were a small God. 

“I care for you a great deal, Mother dear,” 
he whispered at last, “and I’m glad you’ve 
come back; but are you sure Aunty Rosa told 
you everything?” 

“Everything. What does it matter? But” 
— the voice broke with a sob that was also 
laughter — “Punch, my poor, dear, half blind 
darling, don’t you think it was a little foolish 
of you?” 

“No. It saved a lickin’.” 

Mamma shuddered and slipped away in the 
darkness to write a long letter to Papa. Here 
is an extract : 

. . . “Judy is a dear, plump little prig 

who adores the woman, and wears with as 
much gravity as her religious opinions — only 
eight, Jack! — a venerable horse-hair atrocity 
which she calls her Bustle! I have just 
burned it, and the child is asleep in my bed as 
I write. She will come to me at once. Punch 
I cannot quite understand. He is well nour- 
ished, but seems to have been worried into a 
system of small deceptions which the woman 
magnifies into deadly sins. Don’t you recol- 


72 BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


lect our own up-bringing, dear, when the Feab 
of the Lord was so often the beginning of 
falsehood? I shall win Punch to me before 
long. I am taking the children away into the 
country to get them to know me, and, on the 
whole, I am content, or shall be when you 
come home, dear boy, and then, thank God, 
we shall be all under one roof again at last !” 

Three months later, Punch, no longer Black 
Sheep, has discovered that he is the veritable 
owner of a real, live, lovely Mamma, who is 
also a sister, comforter, and friend, and that 
he must protect her till the Father comes home. 
Deception does not suit the part of a protector, 
and, when one can do anything without ques- 
tion, where is the use of deception? 

“Mother would be awfully cross if you 
walked through that ditch,” says Judy, con- 
tinuing a conversation. 

“Mother’s never angry,” says Punch. 
“She’d just say, 'You’re a little paged’ ; and 
that’s not nice, but I’ll show.” 

Punch walks through the ditch and mires 
himself to the knees. “Mother, dear,” he 
shouts, “I’m just as dirty as I can pos-sib-\y 
be!” 

“Then change your clothes as quickly as you 
pos -sib-ly can !” rings out Mother’s clear voice 


BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 


73 


from the house. “And don't be a little pagal!” 

“There! Told you so," says Punch. “It’s 
all different now, and we are just as much 
Mother’s as if she had never gone.’’ 

Not altogether, O Punch, for when young 
lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of 
Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in 
the world will not wholly take away that 
knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes 
for a while to the light, and teach Faith where 
no Faith was. 

















• r 












HIS MAJESTY THE KING 

















































HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


“Where the word of a King is, there is power: And 
who may say unto him — What doest thou?” 


4 4 ETH ! And Chimo to sleep at ve foot of 



A ve bed, and ve pink pikky-book, and ve 
bwead — ’cause I will be hungwy in ve night — 
and vat’s all, Miss Biddums. And now give 
me one kiss and I’ll go to sleep. — So! Kite 
quiet. Ow! Ve pink pikky-book has slidded 
under ve pillow and ve bwead is cwumbling! 
Miss Biddums! Miss i?f</dums! I’m so un- 
comfy! Come and tuck me up, Miss Bid- 
dums.” 

His Majesty the King was going to bed ; and 
poor, patient Miss Biddums, who had adver- 
tised herself humbly as a “young person, 
European, accustomed to the care of little chil- 
dren,” was forced to wait upon his royal 
caprices. The going to bed was always a 
lengthy process, because His Majesty had a 
convenient knack of forgetting which of his 
many friends, from the mehter’s son to the 


78 HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


Commissioner’s daughter, he had prayed for, 
and, lest the Deity should take offence, was 
used to toil through his little prayers, in all 
reverence, five times in one evening. His 
Majesty the King believed in the efficacy of 
prayer as devoutly as he believed in Chimo the 
patient spaniel, or Miss Biddums, who could 
reach him down his gun — “with cursuffun caps 
— reel ones” — from the upper shelves of the 
big nursery cupboard. 

At the door of the nursery his authority 
stopped. Beyond lay the empire of his father 
and mother — two very terrible people who had 
no time to waste upon His Majesty the King. 
His voice was lowered when he passed the 
frontier of his own dominions, his actions were 
fettered, and his soul was filled with awe be- 
cause of the grim man who lived among a 
wilderness of pigeonholes and the most fas- 
cinating pieces of red tape, and the wonderful 
woman who was always getting into or step- 
ping out of the big carriage. 

To the one belonged the mysteries of the 
“duftar- room” ; to the other the great, reflected 
wilderness of the “Memsahib’s room” where 
the shiny, scented dresses hung on pegs, miles 
and miles up in the air, and the just-seen 
plateau of the toilet-table revealed an acreage 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 79 


of speckly combs, broidered “hanafitch bags,” 
and “white-headed” brushes. 

There was no room for His Majesty the 
King either in official reserve or mundane gor- 
geousness. He had discovered that, ages and 
ages ago — before even Chimo came to the 
house, or Miss Biddums had ceased grizzling 
over a packet of greasy letters which appeared 
to be her chief treasure on earth. His Majesty 
the King, therefore, wisely confined himself to 
his own territories, where only Miss Biddums, 
and she feebly, disputed his sway. 

From Miss Biddums he had picked up his 
simple theology and welded it to the legends of 
gods and devils that he had learned in the ser- 
vants’ quarters. 

To Miss Biddums he confided with equal 
trust his tattered garments and his more serious 
griefs. She would make everything whole. 
She knew exactly how the Earth had been born, 
and had reassured the trembling soul of His 
Majesty the King that terrible time in July 
when it rained continuously for seven days and 
seven nights, and — there was no Ark ready 
and all the ravens had flown away! She was 
the most powerful person with whom he was 
brought into contact — always excepting the two 
remote and silent people beyond the nursry 
door. 


8o HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


How was His Majesty the King to know that, 
six years ago, in the summer of his birth, Mrs. 
Austell, turning over her husband’s papers, had 
come upon the intemperate letter of a foolish 
woman who had been carried away by the silent 
man’s strength and personal beauty? How 
could he tell what evil the overlooked slip of 
note-paper had wrought in the mind of a des- 
perately jealous wife? How could he, despite 
his wisdom, guess that his mother had chosen 
to make of it excuse for a bar and a division 
between herself and her husband, that strength- 
ened and grew harder to break with each year ; 
that she, having unearthed this skeleton in the 
cupboard, had trained it into a household God 
which should be about their path and about 
their bed, and poison all their ways? 

These things were beyond the province of 
His Majesty the King. He only knew that his 
father was daily absorbed in some mysterious 
work for a thing called the Sirkar and that his 
mother was the victim alternately of the Nautch 
and the Burrakhana. To these entertainments 
she was escorted by a Captain-Man for whom 
His Majesty the King had no regard. 

“He doesn't laugh,” he argued with Miss 
Biddums, who would fain have taught him 
charity. “He only makes faces wiv his mouf, 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


81 


and when he wants to o-muse me I am not 
o-mused.” And His Majesty the King shook 
his head as one who knew the deceitfulness of 
this world. 

Morning and evening it was his duty to 
salute his father and mother — the former with 
a grave shake of the hand, and the latter with 
an equally grave kiss. Once, indeed, he had 
put his arms round his mother’s neck, in the 
fashion he used toward Miss Biddums. The 
openwork of his sleeve-edge caught in an ear- 
ring, and the last stage of His Majesty’s little 
overture was a suppressed scream and summary 
dismissal to the nursery. 

“It’s w’ong,” thought His Majesty the King, 
“to hug Memsahibs wiv tings in veir ears. I 
will amember.” He never repeated the experi- 
ment. 

Miss Biddums, it must be confessed, spoiled 
him as much as his nature admitted, in some 
sort of recompense for what she called “the 
hard ways of his Papa and Mamma.” She, 
like her charge, knew nothing of the trouble 
between man and wife — the savage contempt 
for a woman’s stupidity on the one side, or the 
dull, rankling anger on the other. Miss Bid- 
dums had looked after many little children in 
her time, and served in many establishments. 


82 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


Being a discreet woman, she observed little and 
said less, and, when her pupils went over the 
sea to the Great Unknown which she, with 
touching confidence in her hearers, called 
“Home,” packed up her slender belongings and 
sought for employment afresh, lavishing all 
her love on each successive batch of ingrates. 
Only His Majesty the King had repaid her 
affection with interest; and in his uncompre- 
hending ears she had told the tale of nearly all 
her hopes, her aspirations, the hopes that were 
dead, and the dazzling glories of her ancestral 
home in “Ca/cutta, close to Wellington 
Square.” 

Everything above the average was in the 
eyes of His Majesty the King “Calcutta good.” 
When Miss Biddums had crossed his royal will, 
he reversed the epithet to vex that estimable 
lady, and all things evil were, until the tears 
of repentance swept away spite, “Calcutta bad.” 

Now and again Miss Biddums begged for 
him the rare pleasure of a day in the society of 
the Commissioner’s child — the wilful four- 
year-old Patsie, who, to the intense amazement 
of His Majesty the King, was idolized by her 
parents. On thinking the question out at 
length, by roads unknown to those who have 
left childhood behind, he came to the conclusion 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 83 


that Patsie was petted because she wore a big 
blue sash and yellow hair. 

This precious discovery he kept to himself. 
The yellow hair was absolutely beyond his 
power, his own tousled wig being potato- 
brown; but something might be done toward 
the blue sash. He tied a large knot in his 
mosquito-curtains in order to remember to con- 
sult Patsie on their next meeting. She was the 
only child he had ever spoken to, and almost 
the only one that he had even seen. The little 
memory and the very large and ragged knot 
held good. 

“Patsie, lend me your blue wiband,” said 
His Majesty the King. 

‘Youl’l bewy it,” said Patsie, doubtfully, 
mindful of certain fearful atrocities committed 
on her doll. 

“No, I won’t — twoofanhonor. It’s for me 
to wear.” 

“Pooh!” said Patsie. “Boys don’t wear 
sa-ashes. Zey’s only for dirls.” 

“I didn’t know.” The face of His Majesty 
the King fell. 

“Who wants ribands? Are you playing 
horses, chicabiddies ?” said the Commissioner’s 
wife, stepping into the veranda. 

“Toby wanted my sash,” explained Patsie.. 


84 HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


“I don’t now,” said His Majesty the King, 
hastily, feeling that with one of these terrible 
“grown-ups” his poor little secret would be 
shamelessly wrenched from him, and perhaps — 
most burning desecration of all — laughed at. 

“I’ll give you a cracker-cap,” said the Com- 
missioner’s wife. “Come along with me, Toby, 
and we’ll choose it.” 

The cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed 
vermilion-and-tinsel splendor. His Majesty the 
King fitted it on his royal brow. The Commis- 
sioner’s wife had a face that children instinc- 
tively trusted, and her action, as she adjusted 
the toppling middle spike, was tender. 

“Will it do as well ?” stammered His Majesty 
the King. 

“As what, little one?” 

“As ve wiban?” 

“Oh, quite. Go and look at yourself in the 
glass.” 

The words were spoken in all sincerity and 
to help forward any absurd “dressing-up” 
amusement that the children might take into 
their minds. But the young savage has a keen 
sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the King 
swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw 
his head crowned with the staring horror of a 
fool’s cap — a thing which his father would 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 85 


rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. 
He plucked it off, and burst into tears. 

“Toby,” said the Commissioner’s wife, 
gravely, “you shouldn’t give way to temper. I 
am very sorry to see it. It’s wrong.” 

His Majesty the King sobbed inconsolably, 
and the heart of Patsie’s mother was touched. 
She drew the child on to her knee. Clearly it 
was not temper alone. 

“What is it, Toby? Won’t you tell me? 
Aren’t you well ?” 

The torrent of sobs and speech met, and 
fought for a time, with chokings and gulpings 
and gasps. Then, in a sudden rush, His 
Majesty the King was delivered of a few in- 
articulate sounds, followed by the words : — 
“Go a — way you — dirty — little debbil !” 

“Toby ! What do you mean ?” 

“It’s what he’d say. I know it is ! He said 
vat when vere was only a little, little eggy mess, 
on my t-t-unic; and he’d say it again, and 
laugh, if I went in wif vat on my head.” 

“Who would say that ?” 

“M-m-my Papa! And I fought if 1 had ve 
blue wiban, he’d let me play in ve waste-paper 
basket under ve table.” 

“What blue riband, childie?” 

“Ve same vat Patsie had — ve big blue wiban 
w-w-wound my t-t-tummy I” 


86 HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


“What is it, Toby? There’s something on 
your mind. Tell me all about it, and perhaps 
I can help.” 

“Isn’t anyfing,” sniffed His Majesty, mind- 
ful of his manhood, and raising his head from 
the motherly bosom upon which it was rest- 
ing. “I only fought vat you — you petted Pat- 
sie ’cause she had ve blue wiban, and — and if 
I’d had ve blue wiban too, m-my Papa w-would 
pet me.” 

The secret was out, and His Majesty the 
King sobbed bitterly in spite of the arms round 
him, and the murmur of comfort on his heated 
little forehead. 

Enter Patsie tumultously, embarrassed by 
several lengths of the Commisioner’s pet mah- 
seer- rod. “Turn along, Toby! Zere’s a chu- 
chu lizard in ze chick, and I’ve told Chimo to 
watch him till we turn. If we poke him wiz 
zis his tail will go wiggle-wiggle and fall off. 
Turn along! I can’t weach.” 

“I’m cornin’,” said His Majesty the King, 
climbing down from the Commissioner’s wife’s 
knee after a hasty kiss. 

Two minutes later, the chu-chu lizard’s tail 
was wriggling on the matting of the veranda, 
and the children were gravely poking it with 
splinters from the chick, to urge its exhausted 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 87 


vitality into “just one wiggle more, ’cause it 
doesn’t hurt chu-chu.” 

The Commisioner’s wife stood in the door- 
way and watched: — “Poor little mite! A blue 
sash . . . and my own precious Patsie ! I 

wonder if the best of us, or we who love them 
best, ever understand what goes on in their 
topsy-turvy little heads.” 

A big tear splashed on the Commissioner’s 
wife’s wedding-ring, and she went indoors to 
devise a tea for the benefit of His Majesty the 
King. 

“Their souls aren’t in their tummies at that 
age in this climate,” said the Commissioner’s 
wife, “but they are not far off. I wonder if I 
could make Mrs. Austell understand. Poor 
little fellow !” 

With simple craft, the Commissioner’s wife 
called on Mrs. Austell and spoke long and lov- 
ingly about children; inquiring specially for 
His Majesty the King. 

“He’s with his governess,” said Mrs. Austell, 
and the tone intimated that she was not inter- 
ested. 

The Commissioner’s wife, unskilled in the 
art of war, continued her questionings. “I 
don’t know,” said Mrs. Austell. “These things 
are left to Miss Biddums, and, of course, she 
does not ill-treat the child.” 


88 HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


The Commissioner’s wife left hastily. The 
last sentence jarred upon her nerves. “Doesn’t 
ill-treat the child ! As if that were all ! I won- 
der what Tom would say if I only ‘didn’t ill- 
treat’ Patsie!” 

Thenceforward, His Majesty the King was 
an honored guest at the Commissioner’s house, 
and the chosen friend of Patsie, with whom he 
blundered into as many scrapes as the com- 
pound and the servants’ quarters afforded. 
Patsie’s Mamma was always ready to give 
counsel, help, and sympathy, and, if need were 
and callers few, to enter into their games with 
an abandon that would have shocked the sleek- 
haired subalterns who squirmed painfully in 
their chairs when they came to call on her 
whom they profanely nicknamed “Mother 
Bunch.” 

Yet, in spite of Patsie and Patsie’s Mamma, 
and the love that these two lavished upon him, 
His Majesty the King fell grievously from 
grace, and committed no less a sin than that 
of theft — unknown, it is true, but burdensome. 

There came a man to the door one day, when 
His Majesty was playing in the hall and the 
bearer had gone to dinner, with a packet for 
his Majesty’s Mamma. And he put it upon the 
hall-table, said that there was no answer, and 
departed. 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 89 


Presently, the pattern of the dado ceased to 
interest His Majesty, while the packet, a white, 
neatly wrapped one of fascinating shape, inter- 
ested him very much indeed. His Mamma was 
out, so was Miss Biddums, and there was pink 
string round the packet. He greatly desired 
pink string. It would help him in many of his 
little businesses — the haulage across the floor 
of his small cane-chair, the torturing of Chimo, 
who could never understand harness — and so 
forth. If he took the string it would be his 
own, and nobody would be any the wiser. He 
certainly could not pluck up sufficient courage 
to ask Mamma for it. Wherefore, mounting 
upon a chair, he carefully untied the string and, 
behold, the stiff white paper spread out in four 
directions, and revealed a beautiful little leather 
box with gold lines upon it! He tried to re- 
place the string, but that was a failure. So he 
opened the box to get full satisfaction for his 
iniquity, and saw a most beautiful Star that 
shone and winked, and was altogether lovely 
and desirable. 

“Vat,” said His Majesty, meditatively, “is a 
’parkle cwown, like what I will wear when I 
go to heaven. I will wear it on my head — 
Miss Biddums says so. I would like to wear 
it now . I would like to play wiv it. I will take 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


it away and play wiv it, very careful, until 
Mamma asks for it. I fink it was bought for 
me to play wiv — same as my cart.” 

His Majesty the King was arguing against 
his conscience, and he knew it, for he thought 
immediately after: “Never mind. I will keep 
it to play wiv until Mamma says where is it, 
and then I will say: — T tookt it and I am 
sorry.’ I will not hurt it because it is a ’parkle 
cwown. But Miss Biddums will tell me to put 
it back. I will not show it to Miss Biddums.” 

If Mamma had come in at that moment all 
would have gone well. She did not, and His 
Majesty the King stuffed paper, case, and 
jewel into the breast of his blouse and marched 
to the nurser). 

“When Mamma asks I will tell,” was the 
salve that he laid upon his conscience. But 
Mamma never asked, and for three whole days 
His Majesty the King gloated over his treas- 
ure. It was of no earthly use to him, but it was 
splendid, and, for aught he knew, something 
dropped from the heavens themselves. Still 
Mamma made no inquiries, and it seemed to 
him, in his furtive peeps, as though the shiny 
stones grew dim. What was the use of a 
“ ’sparkle crown” if it made a little boy feel all 
bad in his inside? He had the pink string as 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


91 


well as the other treasure, but greatly he 
wished that he had not gone beyond the string. 
It was his first experience of iniquity, and it 
pained him after the flush of possession and 
secret delight in the “’parkle cwown” had died 
away. 

Each day that he delayed rendered confes- 
sion to the people beyond the nursery doors 
more impossible. Now and again he deter- 
mined to put himself in the path of the beauti- 
fully attired lady as she was going out, and 
explain that he and no one else was the posses- 
sor of a “’parkle cwown,” most beautiful and 
quite uninquired for. But she passed hurriedly 
to her carriage, and the opportunity was gone 
before His Majesty the King could draw the 
deep breath which clinches noble resolve. The 
dread secret cut him off from Miss Biddums, 
Patsie, and the Commissioner’s wife, and — 
doubly hard fate — when he brooded over it 
Patsie said, and told her mother, that he was 
cross. 

The days were very long to His Majesty the 
King, and the nights longer still. Miss Bid- 
dums had informed him, more than once, what 
was the ultimate destiny of “fieves,” and when 
he passed the interminable mud flanks of the 
Central Jail, he shook in his little strapped 
shoes. 


92 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


But release came after an afternoon spent in 
playing boats by the edge of the tank at the 
bottom of the garden. His Majesty the King 
went to tea, and, for the first time in his mem- 
ory, the meal revolted him. His nose was very 
cold, and his cheeks were burning hot. There 
was a weight about his feet, and he pressed his 
head several times to make sure that it was not 
swelling as he sat. 

“I feel vevy funny,” said His Majesty the 
King, rubbing his nose. “Vere’s a buzz-buzz 
in my head.” 

He went to bed quietly. Miss Biddums was 
out and the bearer undressed him. 

The sin of the “’parkle cwown” was forgot- 
ten in the acuteness of the discomfort to which 
he roused after a leaden sleep of some hours. 
He was thirsty, and the bearer had forgotten 
to leave the drinking-water. “Miss Biddums! 
Miss Biddums! I’m so kirsty!” 

No answer. Miss Biddums had leave to at- 
tend the wedding of a Calcutta schoolmate. 
His Majesty the King had forgotten that. 

“I want a dwink of water!” he cried, but 
his voice was dried up in his throat. “I want 
a dwink! Vere is ve glass?” 

He sat up in bed and looked round. There 
was a murmur of voices from the other side 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 93 


of the nursery door. It was better to face the 
terrible unknown than to choke in the dark. 
He slipped out of bed, but his feet were 
strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. 
Then he pushed the door open and staggered 
— a puffed and purple-faced little figure — into 
the brilliant light of the dining-room full of 
pretty ladies. 

“I’m vevy hot ! I’m vevy uncomfit i vie,” 
moaned His Majesty the King, clinging to the 
portiere, “and vere’s no water in ve glass, and 
I’m so kirsty. Give me a dwink of water.” 

An apparition in black and white — His 
Majesty the King could hardly see distinctly — 
lifted him up to the level of the table, and felt 
his wrists and forehead. The water came, and 
he drank deeply, his teeth chattering against 
the edge of the tumbler. Then every one 
seemed to go away — every one except the huge 
man in black and white, who carried him back 
to his bed; the mother and father following. 
And the sin of the “’parkle cwown” rushed 
back and took possession of the terrified soul. 

“Fm a fief!” he gasped. “I want to tell 
Miss Biddums vat Fm a fief. Vere is Miss 
Biddums ?” 

Miss Biddums had come and was bending 
over him. “Fm a fief,” he whispered. “A fief 


94 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


— like ve men in ve pwison. But I’ll tell now. 
I tookt ... I tookt ve ’parkle cwown 
when the man that came left it in ve hall. I 
bwoke ve paper and ve little bwown box, and 
it looked shiny, and I tookt it to play wif, and 
I was afwaid. It’s in ve dooly-box at ve bot- 
tom. No one never asked for it, but I was 
afwaid. Oh, go an’ get ve dooly-box !” 

Miss Biddums obediently stooped to the low- 
est shelf of the almirah and unearthed the big 
paper box in which His Majesty the King kept 
his dearest possessions. Under the tin soldiers, 
and a layer of mud pellets for a pellet-bow, 
winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped 
roughly in a half-sheet of note-paper whereon 
were a few words. 

Somebody was crying at the head of the bed, 
and a man’s hand touched the forehead of His 
Majesty the King, who grasped the packet and 
spread it on the bed. 

“Vat is ve ’parkle cwown,” he said, and 
wept bitterly; for now that he had made resti- 
tution he would fain have kept the shining 
splendor with him. 

“It concerns you too,” said a voice at the 
head of the bed. “Read the note. This is not 
the time to keep back anything.” 

The note was curt, very much to the point, 


HIS MAJESTY THE KING 95 


and signed by a single initial. “If you wear 
this to-morrow night I shall know what to 
expect ” The date was three weeks old. 

A whisper followed, and the deeper voice 
returned: “And you drifted as far apart as 
that ! I think it makes us quits now, doesn’t 
it? Oh, can’t we drop this folly once and for 
all? Is it worth it, darling?” 

“Kiss me too,” said His Majesty the King, 
dreamily. “You isn’t vevy angwy, is you?” 

The fever burned itself out, and His Majesty 
the King slept. 

When he waked, it was in a new world — 
peopled by his father and mother as well as 
Miss Biddums: and there was much love in 
that world and no morsel of fear, and more 
petting than was good for several little boys. 
His Majesty the King was too young to moral- 
ize on the uncertainty of things human, or he 
would have been impressed with the singular 
advantages of crime — ay, black sin. Behold, 
he had stolen the “’parkle cwown,” and his 
reward was Love, and the right to play in the 
waste-paper basket under the table “for al- 
ways.” 

* * * * * * 

He trotted over to spend an afternoon with 


96 HIS MAJESTY THE KING 


Patsie, and the Commissioner’s wife would 
have kissed him. “No, not vere,” said His 
Majesty the King, with superb insolence, fenc- 
ing one corner of his mouth with his hand. 
“Vat’s my Mamma’s place — vere she kisses 
me.” 

“Oh!” said the Commissioner’s wife, briefly. 
Then to herself : “Well, I suppose I ought to 
be glad for his sake. Children are selfish little 
grubs and — I’ve got my Patsie.” 


THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 



THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 


“And a little child shall lead them.” 

I N the Army List they still stand as “The 
Fore and Fit Princess Hohenzollern-Sig- 
maringen-Auspach’s Merther-Tydsfilshire Own 
Royal Loyal Light Infantry, Regimental Dis- 
trict 329A,” but the Army through all its bar- 
racks and canteens knows them now as the 
“Fore and Aft.” They may in time do some- 
thing that shall make their new title honorable, 
but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and 
the man who calls them “Fore and Aft” does 
so at the risk of the head which is on his 
shoulders. 

Two words breathed into the stables of a 
certain Cavalry Regiment will bring the men 
out into the streets with belts and mops and 
bad language; but a whisper of “Fore and 
Aft” will bring out this regiment with rifles. 

Their one excuse is that they came again 
and did their best to finish the job in style. 
But for a time all their world knows that they 
99 


100 


THE DRUMS OF 


were openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, 
shaking and afraid. The men know it; their 
officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, 
and when the next war comes the enemy will 
know it also. There are two or three regi- 
ments of the Line that have a black mark 
against their names which they will then wipe 
out, and it will be excessively inconvenient for 
the troops upon whom they do their wiping. 

The courage of the British soldier is offi- 
cially supposed to be above proof, and, as a 
general rule, it is so. The exceptions are de- 
cently shoveled out of sight, only to be referred 
to in the freshet of unguarded talk that occa- 
sionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight. 
Then one hears strange and horrible stories of 
men not following their officers, of orders be- 
ing given by those who had no right to give 
them, and of disgrace that, but for the stand- 
ing luck of the British Army, might have ended 
in brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant 
stories to listen to, and the Messes tell them un- 
der their breath, sitting by the big wood fires, 
and the young officer bows his head and thinks 
to himself, please God, his men shall never 
behave unhandily. 

The British soldier is not altogether to be 
blamed for occasional lapses; but this verdict 


THE FORE AND AFT 


IOI 


he should not know. A moderately intelligent 
General will waste six months in mastering the 
craft of the particular war that he may be 
waging ; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand 
the capacity of his regiment for three months 
after it has taken the field; and even a Com- 
pany Commander may err and be deceived as 
to the temper and temperament of his own 
handful : wherefore the soldier, and the soldier 
of to-day more particularly, should not be 
blamed for falling back. He should be shot 
or hanged afterward — pour encourager les 
autres; but he should not be vilified in news- 
papers, for that is want of tact and waste of 
space. 

He has, let us say, been in the service of the 
Empress for, perhaps, four years. He will 
leave in another two years. He has no in- 
herited morals, and four years are not suffi- 
cient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to 
teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. 
He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself 
— in India he wants to save money — and he 
does not in the least like getting hurt. He has 
received just sufficient education to make him 
understand half the purport of the orders he 
receives, and to speculate on the nature of 
clean, incised, and shattering wounds. Thus, 


102 


THE DRUMS OF 


if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory 
to an attack, he knows that he runs a very 
great risk of being killed while he is deploying, 
and suspects that he is being thrown away to 
gain ten minutes’ time. He may either deploy 
with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or 
bunch, or break, according to the discipline un- 
der which he has lain for four years. 

Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed 
with the rudiments of an imagination, ham- 
pered by the intense selfishness of the lower 
classes, and unsupported by any regimental as- 
sociations, this young man is suddenly intro- 
duced to an enemy who in eastern lands is al- 
ways ugly, generally tall and hairy, and fre- 
quently noisy. If he looks to the right and the 
left and sees old soldiers — men of twelve years’ 
service, who, he knows, know what they are 
about — taking a charge, rush, or demonstra- 
tion without embarrassment, he is consoled and 
applies his shoulder to the butt of his rifle with 
a stout heart. His peace is the greater if he 
hears a senior, who has taught him his soldier- 
ing and broken his head on occasion, whisper- 
ing : — “They’ll shout and carry on like this for 
five minutes. Then they’ll rush in, and then 
we’ve got ’em by the short hairs!” 

But, on the other hand, if he sees only men 


THE FORE AND AFT 


103 


of his own term of service, turning white and 
playing with their triggers and saying: — 
“What the Hell's up now?” while the Com- 
pany Commanders are sweating into their 
sword-hilts and shouting: — “Front-rank, fix 
bayonets. Steady there — steady! Sight for 
three hundred — no, for five! Lie down, all! 
Steady! Front-rank, kneel!” and so forth, he 
becomes unhappy ; and grows acutely miserable 
when he hears a comrade turn over with the 
rattle of fire-irons falling into the fender, and 
the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If he can be 
moved about a little and allowed to watch the 
effect of his own fire on the enemy he feels 
merrier, and may be then worked up to the 
blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to 
general belief, controlled by a chilly Devil and 
shakes men like ague. If he is not moved 
about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the 
stomach, and in that crisis is badly mauled and 
hears orders that were never given, he will 
break, and he will break badly; and of all 
things under the sight of the Sun there is noth- 
ing more terrible than a broken British regi- 
ment. When the worst comes to the worst 
and the panic is really epidemic, the men must 
be e'en let go, and the Company Commanders 
had better escape to the enemy and stay there 


104 


THE DRUMS OF 


for safety’s sake. If they cai>be made to come 
again they are not pleasant men to meet, be- 
cause they will not break twice. 

About thirty years from this date, when we 
have succeeded in half-educating everything 
that wears trousers, our Army will be a beau- 
tifully unreliable machine. It will know too 
much and it will do too little. Later still, when 
all men are at the mental level of the officer of 
to-day it will sweep the earth. Speaking 
roughly, you must employ either blackguards 
or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards com- 
manded by gentlemen, to do butcher’s work 
with efficiency and despatch. The ideal soldier 
should, of course, think for himself — the 
Pocketbook says so. Unfortunately, to attain 
this virtue, he has to pass through the phase of 
thinking of himself, and that is misdirected 
genius. A blackguard may be slow to think 
for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, 
and a little punishment teaches him how to 
guard his own skin and perforate another’s. 
A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment, 
officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one 
degree more terrible in action than a hard- 
bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians 
led by most improper young unbelievers. But 
these things prove the rule — which is that the 


THE FORE AND AFT 


105 


midway men are not to be trusted alone. They 
have ideas about the value of life and an up- 
bringing that has not taught them to go on 
and take the chances. They are carefully un- 
provided with a backing of comrades who have 
been shot over, and until that backing is re- 
introduced, as a great many Regimental Com- 
manders intend it shall be, they are more liable 
to disgrace themselves than the size of the Em- 
pire or the dignity of the Army allows. Their 
officers are as good as good can be, because 
their training begins early, and God has ar- 
ranged that a clean-run youth of the British 
middle classes shall, in the matter of backbone, 
brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. 
For this reason a child of eighteen will stand 
up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in his hand 
and joy in his heart until he is dropped. If 
he dies, he dies like a gentleman. If he lives, 
he writes Home that he has been “potted,” 
“sniped,” “chipped” or “cut over,” and sits 
down to besiege Government for a wound- 
gratuity until the next little war breaks out, 
when he perjures himself before a Medical 
Board, blarneys his Colonel, burns incense 
round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the 
Front once more. 

Which homily brings me directly to a brace 


io 6 


THE DRUMS OF 


of the most finished little fiends that ever 
banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a 
British Regiment. They ended their sinful 
career by open and flagrant mutiny and were 
shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew 
— Piggy Lew — and they were bold, bad drum- 
mer-boys, both of them frequently birched by 
the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft. 

Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and 
Lew was about the same age. When not 
looked after, they smoked and drank. They 
swore habitually after the manner of the Bar- 
rack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes 
from between clinched teeth; and they fought 
religiously once a week. Jakin had sprung 
from some London gutter and may or may not 
have passed through Dr. Barnado’s hands ere 
he arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. 
Lew could remember nothing except the regi- 
ment and the delight of listening to the Band 
from his earliest years. He hid somewhere in 
his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, 
and was most mistakenly furnished with the 
head of a cherub : insomuch that beautiful la- 
dies who watched the Regiment in church were 
wont to speak of him as a “darling.” They 
never heard his vitriolic comments on their 
manners and morals, as he walked back to bar- 


THE FORE AND AFT 


107 


racks with the Band and matured fresh causes 
of offence against Jakin. 

The other drummer-boys hated both lads on 
account of their illogical conduct. Jakin might 
be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing 
Jakin’s head in the dirt, but any attempt at 
aggression on the part of an outsider was met 
by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin; and 
the consequences were painful. The boys were 
the Ishmaels of the corps, but wealthy 
Ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate 
weeks for the sport of the barracks when they 
were not pitted against other boys; and thus 
amassed money. 

On this particular day there was dissention 
in the camp. They had just been convicted 
afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys 
who use plug-tobacco, and Lew’s contention 
was that Jakin had “stunk so ’orrid bad from 
keepin’ the pipe in pocket,” that he and he alone 
was responsible for the birching they were both 
tingling under. 

“I tell you I ’id the pipe back o’ barricks,” 
said Jakin, pacifically. 

“You’re a bloomin’ liar,” said Lew, without 
heat. 

“You’re a bloomin’ little bastard,” said 
Jakin, strong in the knowledge that his own 
ancestry was unknown. 


io8 


THE DRUMS OF 


Now there is one word in the extended vo- 
cabulary of barrack-room abuse that cannot 
pass without comment. You may call a man 
a thief and risk nothing. You may even call 
him a coward without finding more than a 
boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call 
a man a bastard unless you are prepared to 
prove it on his front teeth. 

“You might ha’ kep’ that till I wasn’t so 
sore,” said Lew, sorrowfully, dodging round 
Jakin’s guard. 

“I’ll make you sorer,” said Jakin, genially, 
and got home on Lew’s alabaster forehead. 
All would have gone well and this story, as 
the books say, would never have been written, 
had not his evil fate prompted the Bazar-Ser- 
geant’s son, a long, employless man of five 
and twenty, to put in an appearance after the 
first round. He was eternally in need of 
money, and knew that the boys had silver. 

“Fighting again,” said he. ‘Til report you 
to my father, and he’ll report you to the Color- 
Sergeant.” 

“What’s that to you?” said Jakin, with an 
unpleasant dilation of the nostrils. 

“Oh! nothing to me. You’ll get into 
trouble, and you’ve been up too often to afford 
that” 


THE FORE AND AFT 


109 


“What the Hell do you know about what 
we’ve done?” asked Lew the Seraph. “ You 
aren’t in the Army, you lousy, cadging 
civilian.” 

He closed in on the man’s left flank. 

“Jes’ ’cause you find two gentlemen settlin’ 
their differences with their fistes you stick in 
your ugly nose where you aren’t wanted. Run 
’ome to your ’arf-caste slut of a Ma — or we’ll 
give you what-for,” said Jakin. 

The man attempted reprisals by knocking 
the boys’ heads together. The scheme would 
have succeeded had not Jakin punched him 
vehemently in the stomach, or had Lew re- 
frained from kicking his shins. They fought 
together, bleeding and breathless, for half an 
hour, and after heavy punishment, triumphant- 
ly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull 
down a jackal. 

“Now,” gasped Jakin, “I’ll give you what- 
for.” He proceeded to pound the man’s fea- 
tures while Lew stamped on the outlying por- 
tions of his anatomy. Chivalry is not a strong 
point in the composition of the average drum- 
mer-boy. He fights, as do his betters, to make 
his mark. 

Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and aw- 
ful was the wrath of the Bazar-Sergeant. 


no 


THE DRUMS OF 


Awful too was the scene in Orderly-room when 
the two reprobates appeared to answer the 
charge of half-murdering a “civilian.” The 
Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, 
and his son lied. The boys stood to attention 
while the black clouds of evidence accumulated. 

“You little devils are more trouble than the 
rest of the Regiment put together,” said the 
Colonel, angrily. “One might as well admon- 
ish thistledown, and I can’t well put you in 
cells or under stoppages. You must be flogged 
again.” 

“Beg y’ pardon, Sir. Can’t we say nothin’ 
in our own defence, Sir.” shrilled Jakin. 

“Hey! What? Are you going to argue 
with me ?” said the Colonel. 

“No, Sir,” said Lew. “But if a man come to 
you, Sir, and said he was going to report you, 
Sir, for ’aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend, 
Sir, an’ wanted to get money out o’ you, 
Sir”— 

The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of 
laughter. “Well?” said the Colonel. 

“That was what that measly jarnwar there 
did, Sir, and ’e’d ’a’ done it, Sir, if we ’adn’t 
prevented ’im. We didn’t ’it ’im much, Sir. 
’E ’adn’t no manner o’ right to interfere with 
us, Sir. I don’t mind bein’ flogged by the 


THE FORE AND AFT 


hi 


Drum-Major, Sir, nor yet reported by any 
Corp’ral, but I’m — but I don’t think it’s fair, 
Sir, for a civilian to come an’ talk over a man 
in the Army.” 

A second shout of laughter shook the Or- 
derly-room, but the Colonel was grave. 

“What sort of characters have these boys?” 
he asked of the Regimental Sergeant-Major. 

“Accordin’ to the Bandmaster, Sir,” re- 
turned that revered official — the only soul in 
the regiment whom the boys feared — “they do 
everything but lie, Sir.” 

“Is it like we’d go for that man for fun, 
Sir ?” said Lew, pointing to the plaintiff. 

“Oh, admonished, — admonished!” said the 
Colonel, testily, and when the boys had gone 
he read the Bazar-Sergeant’s son a lecture on 
the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave 
orders that the Bandmaster should keep the 
Drums in better discipline. 

“If either of you come to practice again with 
so much as a scratch on your two ugly little 
faces,” thundered the Bandmaster, “I’ll tell 
the Drum-Major to take the skin off your 
backs. Understand that, you young devils.” 

Then he repented of his speech for just the 
length of time that Lew, looking like a Seraph 
in red worsted embellishments, took the place 


1 12 


THE DRUMS OF 


of one of the trumpets — in hospital — and ren- 
dered the echo of a battle-piece. Lew certainly 
was a musician, and had often in his more ex- 
alted moments expressed a yearning to master 
every instrument of the Band. 

“There’s nothing to prevent your becoming 
a Bandmaster, Lew,” said the Bandmaster, 
who had composed waltzes of his own, and 
worked day and night in the interests of the 
Band. 

“What did he say?” demanded Jakin, after 
practice. 

“Said I might be a bloomin’ Bandmaster, an’ 
be asked in to ’ave a glass o’ sherry-wine on 
Mess-nights.” 

“Ho! ’Said you might be a bloomin’ non- 
combatant, did ’e! That’s just about wot ’e 
would say. When I’ve put in my boy’s service 
— it’s a bloomin’ shame that doesn’t count for 
pension — I’ll take on a privit. Then I’ll be a 
Lance in a year — knowin’ what I know about 
the ins an’ outs o’ things. In three years I’ll 
be a bloomin’ Sergeant. I won’t marry then, 
not I ! I’ll ’old on and learn the orf’cers’ ways 
an’ apply for exchange into a reg’ment that 
doesn’t know all about me. Then I’ll be a 
bloomin’ orf’cer. Then I’ll ask you to ’ave a 
glass o’ sherry-wine, Mister Lew, an’ you’ll 


THE FORE AND AFT 


113 

bloomin’ well ’ave to stay in the hanty-room 
while the Mess-Sergeant brings it to your dirty 
’ands.” 

“S’pose I’m going to be a Bandmaster? 
Not I, quite. I’ll be a orf’cer too. There’s 
nothin’ like taking to a thing an’ stickin’ to it, 
the Schoolmaster says. The reg’ment don’t go 
’ome for another seven years. I’ll be a Lance 
then or near to. 

Thus the boys discussed their futures, and 
conducted themselves with exemplary piety for 
a week. That is to say, Lew started a flirtation 
with the Color-Sergeant’s daughter, aged thir- 
teen, — “not,” as he explained to Jakin, “with 
any intention o’ matrimony, but by way o’ 
keepin’ my ’and in.” And the black-haired 
Cris Delighan enjoyed that flirtation more than 
previous ones, and the other drummer-boys 
raged furiously together, and Jakin preached 
sermons on the dangers of “bein’ tangled along 
o’ petticoats.” 

But neither love nor virtue would have held 
Lew long in the paths of propriety had not the 
rumor gone abroad that the Regiment was to 
be sent on active service, to take part in a war 
which, for the sake of brevity, we will call 
“The War of the Lost Tribes.” 

The barracks had the rumor almost before 


THE DRUMS OF 


114 

the Mess-room, and of all the nine hundred 
men in barracks not ten had seen a shot fired 
in anger. The Colonel had, twenty years ago, 
assisted at a Frontier expedition; one of the 
Majors had seen service at the Cape; a con- 
firmed deserter in E Company had helped to 
clear streets in Ireland ; but that was all. The 
Regiment had been put by for many years. 
The overwhelming mass of its rank and file 
had from three to four years’ service ; the non- 
commissioned officers were under thirty years 
old ; and men and sergeants alike had forgotten 
to speak of the stories written in brief upon the 
Colors — the New Colors that had been formally 
blessed by an Archbishop in England ere the 
Regiment came away. 

They wanted to go to the Front — they were 
enthusiastically anxious to go — but they had no 
knowledge of what war meant, and there was 
none to tell them. They were an educated regi- 
ment, the percentage of school-certificates in 
their ranks was high, and most of the men 
could do more than read and write. They had 
been recruited in loyal observance of the terri- 
torial idea; but they themselves had no notion 
of that idea. They were made up of drafts from 
an over-populated manufacturing district. The 
system had put flesh and muscle upon their 


THE FORE AND AFT 


115 

small bones, but it could not put heart into the 
sons of those who for generations had done 
overmuch work for overscanty pay, had 
sweated in drying-rooms, stooped over looms, 
coughed among white-lead and shivered on 
lime-barges. The men had found food and 
rest in the Army, and now they were going to 
fight “niggers” — people who ran away if you 
shook a stick at them. Wherefore they cheered 
lustily when the rumor ran, and the shrewd, 
clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on 
the chances of batta and of saving their pay. 
At Headquarters, men said: — “The Fore and 
Fit have never been under fire within the last 
generation. Let us, therefore, break them in 
easily by setting them to guard lines of com- 
munication.” And this would have been done 
but for the fact that British Regiments were 
wanted — badly wanted — at the Front, and 
there were doubtful Native Regiments that 
could fill the minor duties. “Brigade ’em with 
two strong Regiments,” said Headquarters. 
“They may be knocked about a bit, but they’ll 
learn their business before they come through. 
Nothing like a night-alarm and a little cutting- 
up of stragglers to make a Regiment smart in 
the field. Wait till they’ve had half a dozen 
sentries’ throats cut.” 


n6 


THE DRUMS OF 


The Colonel wrote with delight that the tem- 
per of his men was excellent, that the Regiment 
was all that could be wished and as sound as 
a bell. The Majors smiled with a sober joy, 
and the subalterns waltzed in pairs down the 
Mess-room after dinner and nearly shot them- 
selves at revolver practice. But there was con- 
sternation in the hearts of Jakin and Lew. 
What was to be done with the drums ? Would 
the Band go to the Front? How many of the 
drums would accompany the Regiment? 

They took council together, sitting in a tree 
and smoking. 

“It’s more than a bloomin’ toss-up they’ll 
leave us be’ind at the Depot with the women. 
You’ll like that,” said Jakin, sarcastically. 

“ ’Cause o’ Cris, y’ mean ? Wot’s a woman, 
or a ’ole bloomin’ depot o’ women, ’longside o’ 
the chanct of field-service? You know I’m as 
keen on goin’ as you,” said Lew. 

“ ’Wish I was a bloomin’ bugler,” said 
Jakin, sadly. 'They’ll take Tom Kidd along, 
that I can plaster a wall with, an’ like as not 
they won’t take us.” 

"Then let’s go an’ make Tom Kidd so 
bloomin’ sick ’e can’t bugle no more. You ’old 
’is ’ands an’ I’ll kick him,” said Lew, wriggling 
on the branch. 


THE FORE AND AFT 


ii 7 

“That ain’t no good neither. We ain’t the 
sort o’ characters to presoon on our rep’tations 
— they’re bad. If they leave the Band at the 
Depot we don’t go, and no error there. If 
they take the Band we may get cast for medical 
unfitness. Are you medical fit, Piggy?” said 
Jakin, digging Lew in the ribs with force. 

“Yus,” said Lew, with an oath. “The Doc- 
tor says your ’eart’s weak through smokin’ on 
an empty stummick. Throw a chest an’ I’ll try 
yer.” 

Jakin threw out his chest, which Lew smote 
with all his might. Jakin turned very pale, 
gasped, crowed, screwed up his eyes and said, 
—“That’s all right.” 

“You’ll do,” said Lew. “I’ve ’eard o’ men 
dyin’ when you ’it ’em fair on the breast-bone.” 

“Don’t bring us no nearer goin’, though,” 
said Jakin. “Do you know where we’re or- 
dered ?” 

“Gawd knows, an’ ’e won’t split on a pal. 
Somewheres up to the Front to kill Paythans — 
hairy big beggars that turn you inside out if 
they get ’old o’ you. They say their women 
are good-looking, too.” 

“Any loot?” asked the abandoned Jakin. 

“Not a bloomin’ anna, they say, unless you 
dig up the ground an’ see what the niggers ’ave 


n8 


THE DRUMS OF 


’id. They’re a poor lot.” Jakin stood upright 
on the branch and gazed across the plain. 

“Lew,” said he, “there’s the Colonel coming. 
’Colonel’s a good old beggar. Let’s go an’ talk 
to ’im.” 

Lew nearly fell out of the tree at the au- 
dacity of the suggestion. Like Jakin he feared 
not God neither regarded he Man, but there 
are limits even to the audacity of a drummer- 
boy, and to speak to a Colonel was . . . 

But Jakin had slid down the trunk and 
doubled in the direction of the Colonel. That 
officer was walking wrapped in thought and 
visions of a C. B. — yes, even a K. C. B., for 
had he not at command one of the best Regi- 
ments of the Line — the Fore and Fit? And 
he was aware of two small boys charging down 
upon him. Once before it had been solemnly 
reported to him that “the Drums were in a 
state of mutiny”; Jakin and Lew being the 
ringleaders. This looked like an organized 
conspiracy. 

The boys halted at twenty yards, walked to 
the regulation four paces, and saluted together, 
each as well set-up as a ramrod and little taller. 

The Colonel was in a genial mood ; the boys 
appeared very forlorn and unprotected on the 
desolate plain, and one of them was hand- 
some. 


THE FORE AND AFT 


1 19 

“Well !” said the Colonel, recognizing them. 
“Are you going to pull me down in the open? 
I’m sure I never interfere with you, even 
though” — he sniffed suspiciously — “you have 
been smoking.” 

It was time to strike while the iron was hot. 
Their hearts beat tumultously. 

“Beg y’ pardon, Sir,” began Jakin. “The 
Reg’ment’s ordered on active service, Sir?” 

“So I believe,” said the Colonel, courteously. 

“Is the Band goin’, Sir?” said both together. 
Then, without pause, “We’re goin’, Sir, ain’t 
we?” 

“You!” said the Colonel, stepping back the 
more fully to take in the two small figures. 
“You! You’d die in the first march.” 

“No, we wouldn’t, Sir. We can march with 
the Regiment anywheres — p’rade an’ anywhere 
else,” said Jakin. 

“If Tom Kidd goes ’e’ll shut up like a clasp- 
knife,” said Lew. “Tom ’as very close veins 
in both ’is legs, Sir.” 

“Very how much?” 

“Very close veins, Sir. That’s why they 
swells after long p’rade, Sir. If ’e can go, we 
can go, Sir.” 

Again the Colonel looked at them long and 
intently. 


120 


THE DRUMS OF 


“Yes, the Band is going,” he said, as gravely 
as though he had been addressing a brother 
officer. “Have you any parents, either of you 
two ?” 

“No, Sir,” rejoicingly from Lew and Jakin. 
“We’re both orphans, Sir. There’s no one to 
be considered of on our account, Sir.” 

“You poor little sprats, and you want to go 
up to the Front with the Regiment, do you? 
Why?” 

“I’ve wore the Queen’s Uniform for two 
years,” said Jakin. “It’s very ’ard, Sir, that a 
man don’t get no recompense for doin’ ’is 
dooty, Sir.” 

“An’ — an’ if I don’t go, Sir,” interrupted 
Lew, “the Bandmaster ’e says ’e’ll catch an’ 
make a bloo — a blessed musician o’ me, Sir. 
Before I’ve seen any service, Sir.” 

The Colonel made no answer for a long time. 
Then he said quietly : — “If you’re passed by the 
Doctor I dare say you can go. I shouldn’t 
smoke if I were you.” 

The boys saluted and disappeared. The 
Colonel walked home and told the story to his 
wife, who nearly cried over it. The Colonel 
was well pleased. If that was the temper of 
the children, what would not the men do ? 

Jakin and Lew entered the boys’ barrack- 


THE FORE AND AFT 


121 


room with great stateliness, and refused to 
hold any conversation with their comrades for 
at least ten minutes. Then bursting with pride, 
Jakin drawled : — ‘Tve bin intervooin’ the Colo- 
nel. Good old beggar is the Colonel. Says I 
to ’im, ‘Colonel/ says I, ‘let me go to the Front, 
along o’ the Reg’ment.’ ‘To the Front you 
shall go/ says ’e, ‘an’ I only wish there was 
more like you among the dirty little devils that 
bang the bloomin’ drums.’ Kidd, if you throw 
your ’coutrements at me for tellin’ you the truth 
to your own advantage, your legs’ll swell.” 

None the less there was a Battle-Royal in the 
barrack-room, for the boys were consumed with 
envy and hate, and neither Jakin nor Lew be- 
haved in a conciliatory wise. 

“I’m goin’ out to say adoo to my girl,” said 
Lew, to cap the climax. “Don’t none o’ you 
touch my kit because it’s wanted for active 
service, me bein’ specially invited to go by the 
Colonel.” 

He strolled forth and whistled in the clump 
of trees at the back of the Married Quarters till 
Cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses 
being given and taken, Lew began to explain 
the situation. 

“I’m goin’ to the Front with the Reg’ment,” 
he said, valiantly. 


122 


THE DRUMS OF 


“Piggy, you’re a little liar,” said Cris, but 
her heart misgave her, for Lew was not in the 
habit of lying. 

“Liar yourself, Cris,” said Lew, slipping an 
arm round her. “I’m goin’. When the Reg’- 
ment marches out you’ll see me with ’em, all 
galliant and gay. Give us another kiss, Cris, 
on the strength of it.” 

“If you’d on’y a-stayed at the Depot — where 
you ought to ha’ bin — you could get as many of 
’em as — as you dam please,” whimpered Cris, 
putting up her mouth. 

“It’s ’ard, Cris. I grant you it’s ’ard. But 
what’s a man to do? If I’d a-stayed at the De- 
pot, you wouldn’t think anything of me.” 

“Like as not, but I’d ’ave you with me, 
Piggy. An’ all the thinkin’ in the world isn’t 
like kissin’.” 

“An’ all the kissin’ in the world isn’t like 
’avin’ a medal to wear on the front o’ your 
coat.” 

“You won’t get no medal.” 

“Oh, yus, I shall though. Me an’ Jakin are 
the only acting-drummers that’ll be took along. 
All the rest is full men, an’ we’ll get our medals 
with them.” 

“They might ha’ taken anybody but you, 
Piggy. You’ll get killed — you’re so venture- 


THE FORE AND AFT 


123 


some. Stay with me, Piggy, darlin’, down at 
the Depot, an’ I’ll love you true forever.” 

“Ain’t you goin’ to do that now , Cris ? You 
said you was.” 

“O’ course I am, but th’ other’s more com- 
fortable. Wait till you’ve growed a bit, Piggy. 
You aren’t no taller than me now.” 

“I’ve bin in the army for two years an’ I’m 
not goin’ to get out of a chanct o’ seein’ service 
an’ don’t you try to make me do so. I’ll come 
back, Cris, an’ when I take on as a man I’ll 
marry you — marry you when I’m a Lance.” 

“Promise, Piggy?” 

Lew reflected on the future as arranged by 
Jakin a short time previously, but Cris’s mouth 
was very near his own. 

“I promise, s’elp me Gawd !” said he. 

Cris slid an arm round his neck. 

“I won’t ’old you back no more, Piggy. Go 
away an’ get your medal, an’ I’ll make you a 
new button-bag as nice as I know how,” she 
whispered. 

“Put some o’ your ’air into it, Cris, an’ I’ll 
keep it in my pocket so long’s I’m alive.” 

Then Cris wept anew, and the interview 
ended. Public feeling among the drummer- 
boys rose to fever pitch and the lives of Jakin 
and Lew became unenviable. Not only had 


124 


THE DRUMS OF 


they been permitted to enlist two years before 
the regulation boy’s age — fourteen — but, by 
virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they 
were allowed to go to the Front — which thing 
had not happened to acting-drummers within 
the knowledge of boy. The Band which was 
to accompany the Regiment had been cut down 
to the regulation twenty men, the surplus re- 
turning to the ranks. Jakin and Lew were 
attached to the Band as supernumeraries, 
though they would much have preferred being 
Company buglers. 

“ ’Don’t matter much,” said Jakin, after the 
medical inspection. “Be thankful that we’re 
’lowed to go at all. The Doctor ’e said that if 
we could stand what we took from the Bazar- 
Sergeant’s son we’d stand pretty nigh any- 
thing.” 

“Which we will,” said Lew, looking tenderly 
at the ragged and ill-made housewife that Cris 
had given him, with a lock of her hair worked 
into a sprawling “L” upon the cover. 

“It was the best I could,” she sobbed. “I 
wouldn’t let mother nor the Sergeant’s tailor 
’elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an’ remember 
I love you true.” 

They marched to the railway station, nine 
hundred and sixty strong, and every soul in 


THE FORE AND AFT 


125 


cantonments turned out to see them go. The 
drummers gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew 
marching with the Band, the married women 
wept upon the platform, and the Regiment 
cheered its noble self black in the face. 

“A nice level lot,” said the Colonel to the 
Second-in-Command, as they watched the first 
four companies entraining. 

“Fit to do anything,” said the Second-in- 
Command, enthusiastically. “But it seems to 
me they’re a thought too young and tender for 
the work in hand. It’s bitter cold up at the 
Front now.” 

“They’re sound enough,” said the Colonel. 
“We must take our chance of sick casualties.” 

So they went northward, ever northward, 
past droves and droves of camels, armies of 
camp followers, and legions of laden mules, the 
throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek 
the train pulled up at a hopelessly congested 
junction where six lines of temporary track 
accommodated six forty-wagon trains; where 
whistles blew, Babus sweated and Commissariat 
officers swore from dawn till far into the night 
amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales 
and the lowing of a thousand steers. 

“Hurry up — you’re badly wanted at the 
Front,” was the message that greeted the Fore 


126 


THE DRUMS OF 


and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross 
carriages told the same tale. 

“ ’Tisn’t so much the bloomin’ fighting,” 
gasped a headbound trooper of Hussars to a 
knot of admiring Fore and Afts. “ ’Tisn’t so 
much the bloomin’ fightin’, though there’s 
enough o’ that. It’s the bloomin’ food an’ the 
bloomin’ climate. Frost all night ’cept when 
it hails, and biling sun all day, and the water 
stinks fit to knock you down. I got my ’ead 
chipped like a egg ; I’ve got pneumonia too, an’ 
my guts is all out o’ order. ’Tain’t no bloomin’ 
picnic in those parts, I can tell you.” 

“What are the niggers like?” demanded a 
private. 

“There’s some prisoners in that train yon- 
der. Go an’ look at ’em. They’re the aris- 
tocracy o’ the country. The common folk are 
a dashed sight uglier. If you want to know 
what they fight with, reach under my seat an’ 
pull out the long knife that’s there.” 

They dragged out and beheld for the first 
time the grim, bone-handled, triangular Afghan 
knife. It was almost as long as Lew. 

“That’s the thing to jint ye,” said the 
trooper, feebly. 

“It can take off a man’s arm at the shoulder 
as easy as slicing butter. I halved the beggar 


THE FORE AND AFT 


127 


that used that ’tin, but there’s more of his likes 
up above. They don’t understand thr listin’, 
but they’re devils to slice.” 

The men strolled across the tracks to inspect 
the Afghan prisoners. They were unlike any 
“niggers” that the Fore and Aft had ever met 
— these huge, black-haired, scowling sons of 
the Beni-Israel. As the men stared the Af- 
ghans spat freely and muttered one to another 
with lowered eyes. 

“My eyes! Wot awful swine!” said Jakin, 
who was in the rear of the procession. “Say 
old man, how you got puckrowed, eh? Kis- 
wasti you wasn’t hanged for your ugly face, 
hey?” 

The tallest of the company turned, his leg- 
irons, clanking at the movement, and stared at 
the boy. “See!” he cried to his fellows in 
Pushto. “They send children against us. 
What a people, and what fools!” 

“Hya!” said Jakin, nodding his head 
cherrily. “You go down-country. Khana get, 
peenikapanee get — live like a bloomin’ Raja 
ke marfik. That’s a better bandobust than 
baynit get in your innards. Good-bye, ole man. 
Take care o’ your beautiful figure-’ed, an’ try 
to look kushy.” 

The men laughed and fell in for their first 


128 


THE DRUMS OF 


march when they began to realize that a sol- 
dier’s life was not all beer and skittles. They 
were much impressed with the size and bestial 
ferocity of the niggers whom they had now 
learned to call “Paythans,” and more with the 
exceeding discomfort of their own surround- 
ings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps would 
have taught them how to make themselves 
moderately snug at night, but they had no old 
soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march 
said, “they lived like pigs.” They learned the 
heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and 
camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a 
wither-wrung mule. They studied animalculse 
in water, and developed a few cases of dysen- 
tery in their study. 

At the end of their third march they were 
disagreeably surprised by the arrival in their 
camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired 
from a steadyrest at seven hundred yards, 
flicked out the brains of a private seated by 
the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a 
night, and was the beginning of a long-range 
fire carefully calculated to that end. In the 
daytime they saw nothing except an occasional 
puff of smoke from a crag above the line of 
march. At night there were distant spurts of 
flame and occasional casualties, which set the 


THE FORE AND AFT 


129 


whole camp blazing into the gloom, and, occa- 
sionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore 
vehemently and vowed that this was magnifi- 
cent but not war. 

Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not 
halt for reprisals against the franctireurs of 
the country-side. Its duty was to go forward 
and make connection with the Scotch and 
Gurkha troops with which it was brigaded. 
The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after 
their first tentative shots, that they were deal- 
ing with a raw regiment. Thereafter they de- 
voted themselves to the task of keeping the 
Fore and Aft on the strain. Not for anything 
would they have taken equal liberties with a 
seasoned corps — with the wicked little Gurkhas, 
whose delight it was to lie out in the open on 
a dark night and stalk their stalkers — with the 
terrible, big men dressed in women’s clothes, 
who could be heard praying to their God in the 
night-watches, and whose peace of mind no 
amount of “sniping” could shake — or with 
those vile Sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously 
unprepared and who dealt out such grim re- 
ward to those who tried to profit by that un- 
preparedness. This white regiment was differ- 
ent — quite different. It slept like a hog, and, 
like a hog, charged in every direction when it 


130 


THE DRUMS OF 


was roused. Its sentries walked with a footfall 
that could be heard for a quarter of a mile, 
would fire at anything that moved — even a 
driven donkey — and when they had once fired, 
could be scientifically “rushed” and laid out a 
horror and an offence against the morning sun. 
Then there were camp-followers who straggled 
and could be cut up without fear. Their 
shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the 
loss of their services would inconvenience them 
sorely. 

Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy be- 
came bolder and the regiment writhed and 
twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The 
crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush 
ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the 
collapse of the sodden canvas and a glorious 
knifing of the men who struggled and kicked 
below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, 
and it shook the already shaken nerves of the 
Fore and Aft. All the courage that they had 
been required to exercise up to this point was 
the “two o’clock in the. morning courage” ; and 
they, so far, had only succeeded in shooting 
their comrades and losing their sleep. 

Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with 
their uniforms dulled and unclean, the “Fore 
and Aft” joined their Brigade. 


THE FORE AND AFT 


131 

“I hear you had a tough time of it coming 
up,” said the Brigadier. But when he saw the 
hospital-sheets his face fell. 

“This is bad,” said he to himself. “They’re 
as rotten as sheep.” And aloud to the Colonel, 
— “I’m afraid we can’t spare you just yet. We 
want all we have, else I should have given you 
ten days to recruit in.” 

The Colonel winced. “On my honor, Sir,” 
he returned, “there is not the least necessity to 
think of sparing us. My men have been rather 
mauled and upset without a fair return. They 
only want to go in somewhere where they can 
see what’s before them.” 

“ ’Can’t say I think much of the Fore and 
Fit,” said the Brigadier, in confidence to his 
Brigade-Major. “They’ve lost all their soldier- 
ing, and, by the trim of them, might have 
marched through the country from the other 
side. A more fagged-out set of men I never 
put eyes on.” 

“Oh, they’ll improve as the work goes on. 
The parade gloss has been rubbed off a little, 
but they’ll put on field polish before long,” said 
the Brigade-Major. “They’ve been mauled, 
and they don’t quite understand it.” 

They did not. All the hitting was on one 
side, and it was cruelly hard hitting with 


1 3 2 


THE DRUMS OF 


accessories that made them sick. There was 
also the real sickness that laid hold of a strong 
man and dragged him howling to the grave. 
Worst of all, their officers knew just as little 
of the country as the men themselves, and 
looked as if they did. The Fore and Aft were 
in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but 
they believed that all would be well if they could 
once get a fair go-in at the enemy. Pot-shots 
up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, 
and the bayonet never seemed to get a chance. 
Perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed Af- 
ghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, 
and could carry away enough lead to disable 
three Englishmen. The Fore and Fit would 
like some rifle-practice at the enemy — all seven 
hundred rifles blazing together. That wish 
showed the mood of the men. 

The Gurkhas walked into their camp, and in 
broken, barrack-room English strove to frat- 
ernize with them; offered them pipes of tobac- 
co and stood them treat at the canteen. But 
the Fore and Aft, not knowing much of the 
nature of the Gurkhas, treated them as they 
would treat any other “niggers,” and the little 
men in green trotted back to their firm friends 
the Highlanders, and with many grins confided 
to them: — “That dam white regiment no dam 


THE FORE AND AFT 


use. Sulky — ugh! Dirty — ugh! Hya, any 
tot for Johnny?” Whereat the Highlanders 
smote the Gurkhas as to the head, and told 
them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the 
Gurkhas grinned cavernously, for the High- 
landers were their elder brothers and entitled to 
the privileges of kinship. The common soldier 
who touches a Gurkha is more than likely to 
have his head sliced open. 

Three days later the Brigadier arranged a 
battle according to the rules of war and the 
peculiarity of the Afghan temperament. The 
enemy were massing in inconvenient strength 
among the hills, and the moving or many green 
standards warned him that the tribes were “up” 
in aid of the Afghan regular troops. A 
Squadron and a half of Bengal Lancers repre- 
sented the available Cavalry, and two screw- 
guns, borrowed from a column thirty miles 
away, the Artillery at the General’s disposal. 

“If they stand, as I’ve a very strong notion 
that they will, I fancy we shall see an infantry 
fight that will be worth watching,” said the 
Brigadier. “We’ll do it in style. Each regi- 
ment shall be played into action by its Band, 
and we’ll hold the Cavalry in reserve.” 

“For all the reserve ?” somebody asked. 

“For all the reserve ; because we’re going to 


134 


THE DRUMS OF 


crumple them up,” said the Brigadier, who was 
an extraordinary Brigadier, and did not believe 
in the value of a reserve when dealing with 
Asiatics. And, indeed, when you come to think 
of it, had the British Army consistently waited 
for reserves in all its little affairs, the bound- 
aries of Our Empire would have stopped at 
Brighton beach. 

That battle was to be a glorious battle. 

The three regiments debouching from three 
separate gorges, after duly crowning the 
heights above, were to converge from the 
centre, left, and right upon what we will call 
the Afghan army, then stationed toward the 
lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. 
Thus it will be seen that three sides of the val- 
ley practically belonged to the English, while 
the fourth was strictly Afghan property. In 
the event of defeat the Afghans had the rocky 
hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerilla 
tribes in aid would cover their retreat. In the 
event of victory these same tribes would rush 
down and lend their weight to the rout of the 
British. 

The screw-guns were to shell the head of 
each Afghan rush that was made in close for- 
mation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the 
right valley, were to gently stimulate the break- 


THE FORE AND AFT 


135 


up which would follow on the combined attack. 
The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking 
the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at 
his feet. The Fore and Aft would debouch 
from the central gorge, the Gurkhas from the 
left, and the Highlanders from the right, for 
the reason that the left flank of the enemy 
seemed as though it required the most hammer- 
ing. It was not every day that an Afghan 
force would take ground in the open, and the 
Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it. 

“If we only had a few more men,” he said, 
plaintively, “we could surround the creatures 
and crumble ’em up thoroughly. As it is, I’m 
afraid we can only cut them up as they run. 
It’s a great pity.” 

The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken 
peace for five days, and were beginning, in 
spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But 
they were not happy, for they did not know 
the work in hand, and had they known, would 
not have known how to do it. Throughout 
those five days in which old soldiers might 
have taught them the craft of the game, they 
discussed together their misadventures in the 
past — how such an one was alive at dawn and 
dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and 
struggles such another had given up his soul 


136 


THE DRUMS OF 


under the Afghan knife. Death was a new and 
horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who 
were used to die decently of zymotic disease; 
and their careful conservation in barracks had 
done nothing to make them look upon it with 
less dread. 

Very early in the dawn the bugles began to 
blow, and the Fore and Aft, filled with a mis- 
guided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting 
for a cup of coffee and a biscuit ; and were re- 
warded by being kept under arms in the cold 
while the other regiments leisurely prepared for 
the fray. All the world knows that it is ill 
taking the breeks off a Highlander. It is much 
iller to try to make him stir unless he is con- 
vinced of the necessity for haste. 

The Fore and Aft awaited, leaning upon 
their rifles and listening to the protests of their 
empty stomachs. The Colonel did his best to 
remedy the default of lining as soon as it was 
borne in upon him that the affair would not 
begin at once, and so well did he succeed that 
the coffee was just ready when — the men 
moved off, their Band leading. Even then 
there had been a mistake in time, and the Fore 
and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes 
before the proper hour. Their Band wheeled 
to the right after reaching the open, and retired 


THE FORE AND AFT 


137 


behind a little rocky knoll still playing while 
the regiment went past. 

It was not a pleasant sight that opened on 
the uninstructed view, for the lower end of the 
valley appeared to be filled by an army in posi- 
tion — real and actual regiments attired in red 
coats, and — of this there was no doubt — firing 
Martini-Henry bullets which cup up the ground 
a hundred yards in front of the leading com- 
pany. Over that pock-marked ground the regi- 
ment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a 
general and profound courtesy to the piping 
pickets; ducking in perfect time, as though it 
had been brazed on a rod. Being half-capable 
of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the 
simple process of pitching its rifle into its 
shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets 
may have accounted for some of the watchers 
on the hillside, but they certainly did not affect 
the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of 
the rifles drowned any orders that might have 
been given. 

“Good God!” said the Brigadier, sitting on 
the rock high above all. “That regiment has 
spoiled the whole show. Hurry up the others, 
and let the screw-guns get off.” 

But the screw-guns, in working round the 
heights, had stumbled upon a wasp’s nest of a 


i3« 


THE DRUMS OF 


small mud fort which they incontinently shelled 
at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort 
of the occupants, who were unaccustonmed to 
weapons of such devilish precision. 

The Fore and Aft continued to go forward, 
but with shortened stride. Where were the 
other regiments, and why did these niggers use 
Martinis ? They took open order instinctively, 
lying down and firing at random, rushing a 
few paces forward and lying down again, ac- 
cording to the regulations. Once in this forma- 
tion, each man felt himself desperately alone, 
and edged in toward his fellow for comfort’s 
sake. 

Then the crack of his neighbor’s rifle at his 
ear led him to fire as rapidly as he could — again 
for the sake of the comfort of the noise. The 
reward was not long delayed. Five volleys 
plunged the files in banked smoke impenetrable 
to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground 
twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as 
the weight of the bayonet dragged down, and 
to the right arms wearied with holding the 
kick of the leaping Martini. The Company 
Commanders peered helplessly through the 
smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying 
to fan it away with their helmets. 

“High and to the left!” bawled a Captain 


THE FORE AND AFT 


139 


till he was hoarse. “No good! Cease firing, 
and let it drift away a bit.” 

Three and four times the bugles shrieked the 
order, and when it was obeyed the Fore and 
Aft looked that their foe should be lying before 
them in mown swaths of men. A light wind 
drove the smoke to leeward, and showed the 
enemy still in position and apparently un- 
affected. A quarter of a ton of lead had been 
buried a furlong in front of them, as the ragged 
earth attested. 

That was not demoralizing. They were 
waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were 
firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. A 
private of the Fore and Aft spun up his com- 
pany shrieking with agony, another was kick- 
ing the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped 
through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, 
was calling aloud on his comrades to put him 
out of his pain. These were the casualties, and 
they were not soothing to hear or see. The 
smoke cleared to a dull haze. 

Then the foe began to shout with a great 
shouting and a mass — a black mass — detached 
itself from the main body, and rolled over the 
ground at horrid speed. It was composed of, 
perhaps, three hundred men, who would shout 
and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty com- 


140 


THE DRUMS OF 


rades who were determined to die carried home. 
The fifty were Ghazis, half-maddened with 
drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticsm. 
When they rushed the British fire ceased, and 
in the lull the order was given to close ranks 
and meet them with the bayonet. 

Any one who knew the business could have 
told the Fore and Aft that the only way of 
dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at long 
ranges ; because a man who means to die, who 
desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying, 
must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who 
has a lingering prejudice in favor of life if he 
can close with the latter. Where they should 
have closed and gone forward, the Fore and 
Aft opened out and skirmished, and where 
they should have opened out and fired, they 
closed and waited. 

A man dragged from his blankets half 
awake and unfed is never in a pleasant frame 
of mind. Nor does his happiness increase 
when he watches the whites of the eyes of three 
hundred six-foot fiends upon whose beards the 
foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar 
of wrath, and in whose hands are three-foot 
knives. 

The Fore and Aft heard the Gurkha bugles 
bringing that regiment forward at the double, 


THE FORE AND AFT 


141 

while the neighing of the Highland pipes came 
from the left. They strove to stay where they 
were, though the bayonets wavered down the 
line like the oars of a ragged boat. Then they 
felt body to body the amazing physical strength 
of their foes; a shriek of pain ended the rush, 
and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. 
The men clubbed together and smote blindly — 
as often as not at their own fellows. Their 
front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis 
passed on; their backers, now drunk with suc- 
cess, fighting as madly as they. 

Then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, 
and the subalterns dashed into the stew — alone. 
For the rear-rank had heard the clamor in 
front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had 
seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. 
They were not going to stay. It was the rush- 
ing of the camps over again. Let their officers 
go to Hell, if they chose; they would get away 
from the knives. 

“Come on!” shrieked the subalterns, and 
their men, cursing them, drew back, each clos- 
ing into his neighbor and wheeling round. 

Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last 
company, faced their death alone in the belief 
that their men would follow. 

“You’ve killed me, you cowards,” sobbed 


142 


THE DRUMS OF 


Devlin and dropped, cut from the shoulder- 
strap to the centre of the chest, and a fresh de- 
tachment of his men retreating, always retreat- 
ing, trampled him under foot as they made for 
the pass whence they had emerged. 

I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall. 

Child’un, child’un, follow me ! 

Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all? 
Halla — Halla — Halla Halleujah! 


The Gurkhas were pouring through the left 
gorge and over the heights at the double to the 
invitation of their regimental Quickstep. The 
black rocks were crowned with dark green 
spiders as the bugles gave tongue jubilantly: 


In the morning! In the morning by the bright light! 
When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning! 

The Gurkha rear-companies tripped and 
blundered over loose stones. The front-files 
halted for a moment to take stock of the valley 
and to settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy 
little sigh of contentment soughed down the 
ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, 
for behold there below was the enemy, and it 
was to meet them that the Gurkhas had doubled 
so hastily. There was much enemy. There 
would be amusement. The little men hitched 


THE FORE AND AFT 


143 


their kukris well to hand, and gaped expectant- 
ly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone 
is cast for them to fetch. The Gurkhas’ 
ground sloped downward to the valley, and 
they enjoyed a fair view of the proceedings. 
They sat upon the bowlders to watch, for their 
officers were not going to waste their wind in 
assisting to repulse a Ghazi rush more than 
half a mile away. Let the white men look to 
their own front. 

“Hi! yi !” said the Subadar-Major, who 
was sweating profusely. “Dam fools yonder, 
stand close-order! This is no time for close 
order, it’s the time for volleys. Ugh !” 

Horrified, amused, and indignant, the 
Gurkhas beheld the retirement — let us be gentle 
— of the Fore and Aft with a running chorus 
of oaths and commentaries. 

“They run! The white men run! Colonel 
Sahib, may we also do a little running?” mur- 
mured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jemadar. 

But the Colonel would have none of it. “Let 
the beggars be cut up a little,” said he wrath- 
fully. “ ’Serves ’em right. They’ll be prodded 
into facing round in a minute.” He looked 
through his field-glasses, and caught the glint 
of an officer’s sword. 

“Beating ’em with the flat — damned con- 


144 


THE DRUMS OF 


scripts! How the Ghazis; are walking into 
them!’' said he. 

The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with 
them their officers. The narrowness of the 
pass forced the mob into solid formation, and 
the rear-rank delivered some sort of a waver- 
ing volley. The Ghazis drew off, for they did 
not know what reserves the gorge might hide. 
Moreover, it was never wise to chase white 
men too far. They returned as wolves return 
to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they 
had done, and only stopping to slash at the 
wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile 
had the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, 
jammed in the pass, was quivering with pain, 
shaken and demoralized with fear, while the 
officers, maddened beyond control, smote the 
men with the hilts and the flats of their swords. 

“Get back! Get back, you cowards — you 
women! Right about face — column of com- 
panies, form — you hounds !” shouted the Colo- 
nel, and the subalterns swore aloud. But the 
Regiment wanted to go — to go anywhere out 
of the range of those merciless knives. It 
swayed to and fro irresolutely with shouts and 
outcries, while from the right the Gurkhas 
dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper 
Snider bullets at long range into the mob of 
the Ghazis returning to their own troops. 


THE FORE AND AFT 


145 


The Fore and Aft Band, though protected 
from direct fire by the rocky knoll under which 
it had sat down, fled at the first rush. Jakin! 
and Lew would have fled also, but their short 
legs left them fifty yards in the rear, and by 
the time the Band had mixed with the regi- 
ment, they were painfully aware that they 
would have to close in alone and unsupported. 

“Get back to that rock,” gasped Jakin. 
“They won’t see us there.” 

And they returned to the scattered instru- 
ments of the Band ; their hearts nearly bursting 
their ribs. 

“Here’s a nice show for us” said Jakin. 
throwing himself full length on the ground. 
“A bloomin’ fine show for British Infantry! 
Oh, the devils ! They’ve gone an’ left us alone 
here! Wot’ll we do?” 

Lew took possession of a cast-off water 
bottle, which naturally was full of canteen rum ? 
and drank till he coughed again. 

“Drink,” said he, shortly. “They’ll come 
back in a minute or two — you see.” 

Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the 
regiment’s return. They could hear a dull 
clamor from the head of the valley of retreat, 
and saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their 
pace as the Gurkhas fired at them. 


146 


THE DRUMS OF 


“We’re all that’s left of the Band, an’ we’ll 
be cut up as sure as death,” said Jakin. 

“I’ll die game, then,” said Lew, thickly, 
fumbling with his tiny drummer’s sword. The 
drink was working on his brain as it was on 
Jakin’s. 

“ ’Old on ! I know something better than 
fightin’,” said Jakin, “stung by the splendor of 
a sudden thought” due chiefly to rum. “Tip 
our bloomin’ cowards yonder the word to come 
back. The Paythan beggars are well away. 
Come on, Lew ! We won’t get hurt. Take the 
fife an’ give me the drum. The Old Step for 
all your bloomin’ guts are worth! There’s a 
few of our men coming back now. Stand up, 
ye drunken little defaulter. By your right — 
quick march !” 

He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, 
thrust the fife into Lew’s hand, and the two 
boys marched out of the cover of the rock into 
the open, making a hideous hash of the first 
bars of the “British Grenadiers.” 

As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft 
were coming back sullenly and shamefacedly 
under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their 
red coats shone at the head of the valley, and 
behind them were wavering bayonets. But be- 
tween this shattered line and the enemy, who 


THE FORE AND AFT 


147 


with Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty 
retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved 
therefore, lay half a mile of a level ground 
dotted only by the wounded. 

The tune settled into full swing and the boys 
kept shoulder to shoulder, Jakin banging the 
drum as one possessed. The one fife made a 
thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried 
far, even to the Gurkhas. 

“Come on, you dogs!” muttered Jakin, to 
himself. “Are we to play forhever?” Lew was 
staring straight in front of him and marching 
more stiffly than ever he had done on parade. 

And in bitter mockery of the distant mob, 
the old tune of the Old Line shrilled and rat- 
tled: 


Some talk of Alexander, 

And some of Hercules; 

Of Hector and Lysander, 

And such great names as these! 

There was a far-off clapping of hands from 
the Gurkhas, and a roar from the Highlanders 
in the distance, but never a shot was fired by 
British or Afghan. The two little red dots 
moved forward in the open parallel to the ene- 
my's front. 


148 


THE DRUMS OF 


But of all the world’s great heroes 
There’s none that can compare 
With a tow-row-row-row-row-row, 

To the British Grenadier! 

The men of the Fore and Aft were gather- 
ing thick at the entrance into the plain. The 
Brigadier on the heights far above was speech- 
less with rage. Still no movement from the 
enemy. The day stayed to watch the children. 

Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the As- 
sembly, while the fife squealed despairingly. 

“Right about face! Hold up, Lew, you’re 
drunk,” said Jakin. They wheeled and 
marched back: 

Those heroes of antiquity 
Ne’er saw a cannon-ball, 

Nor knew the force o’ powder, 

“Here they come!” said Jakin. “Go on, 
Lew:” 


To scare their foes withal ! 

The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the 
valley. What officers had said to men in that 
time of shame and humiliation will never be 
known; for neither officers nor men speak of 
it now. 


THE FORE AND AFT 


149 


“They are coming anew!” shouted a priest 
among the Afghans. “Do not kill the boys! 
Take them alive, and they shall be of our 
faith.” 

But the first volley had been fired, and Lew 
dropped on his face. Jakin stood for a minute, 
spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and Aft 
came forward, the maledictions of their officers 
in their ears, and in their hearts the shame of 
open shame. 

Half the men had seen the drummers die, 
and they made no sign. They did not even 
shout. They doubled out straight across the 
plain in open order, and they did not fire. 

“This,” said the Colonel of Gurkhas, softly, 
“is the real attack, as it ought to have been de- 
livered. Come on, my children.” 

“Ulu-lu-lu-lu !” squealed the Gurkhas, and 
came down with a joyful clinking of kukris — 
those vicious Gurkha knives. 

On the right there was no rush. The High- 
lander, cannily commending their souls to God 
( for it matters as much to a dead man whether 
he has been shot in a Border scuffle or at 
Waterloo), opened out and fired according to 
their custom, that is to say without heat and 
without intervals, while the screw-guns, having 
disposed of the impertinent mud fort afore- 


THE DRUMS OF 


150 

mentioned, dropped shell after shell into the 
clusters round the flickering green standards 
on the heights. 

“Charrging is an unfortunate necessity,” 
murmured the Color-Sergeant of the right 
company of the Highlanders. 

“It makes the men sweer so, but I am 
thinkin’ that it will come to a charrge if these 
black devils stand much longer. Stewart, 
man, you’re firing into the eye of the sun, and 
he’ll not take any harm for Government am- 
muneetion. A foot lower and a great deal 
slower ! What are the English doing ? They’re 
very quiet there in the centre. Running 
again ?” 

The English were not running. They were 
hacking and hewing and stabbing, for though 
one white man is seldom physically a match for 
an Afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, 
through the pressure of many white men be- 
hind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his 
heart, he becomes capable of doing much with 
both ends of his rifle. The Fore and Aft held 
their fire till one bullet could drive through 
five or six men, and the front of the Afghan 
force gave on the volley. They then selected 
their men, and slew them with deep gasps and 
short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather 



Copyright, 1909, by The Edinburgh Society 








THE FORE AND AFT 


I5i 

belts against strained bodies, and realized for 
the first time that an Afghan attacked is far 
less formidable than an Afghan attacking; 
which fact old soldiers might have told them. 

But they had no old soldiers in their ranks. 

The Gurkhas’ stall at the bazar was the 
noisiest, for the men were engaged — to a nasty 
noise as of beef being cut on the block — with 
the kukri , which they preferred to the bayonet ; 
well knowing how the Afghan hates the half- 
moon blade. 

As the Afghans wavered, the green stand- 
ards on the mountain moved down to assist 
them in a last rally. Which was unwise. The 
Lancers chafing in the right gorge had thrice 
despatched their only subaltern as galloper to 
report on the progress of affairs. On the third 
occasion he returned, with a bullet-graze on his 
knee, swearing strange oaths in Hindoostani, 
and saying that all things were ready. So that 
Squadron swung round the right of the High- 
landers with a wicked whistling of wind in the 
pennons of its lances, and fell upon the rem- 
nant just when, according to all the rules of 
war, it should have waited for the foe to show 
more signs of wavering. 

But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, 
and it ended by the Cavalry finding itself at 


THE DRUMS OF 


152 

the head of the pass by which the Afghans in- 
tended to retreat; and down the track that the 
lances had made streamed two companies of 
the Highlanders, which was never intended by 
the Brigadier. The new development was suc- 
cessful. It detached the enemy from his base 
as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him 
ringed about with fire in that pitiless plain. 
And as a sponge is chased round the bath-tub 
by the hand of the bather, so were the Afghans 
chased till they broke into little detachments 
much more difficult to dispose of than large 
masses. 

“See!” quoth the Brigadier. “Everything 
has come as I arranged. We’ve cut their base, 
and now we’ll bucket ’em to pieces.” 

A direct hammering was all that the Brig- 
adier had dared to hope for, considering the 
size of the force at his disposal ; but men who 
stand or fall by the errors of their opponents 
may be forgiven for turning Chance into De- 
sign. The bucketing went forward merrily. 
The Afghan forces were upon the run — the run 
of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their 
shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and 
threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance- 
butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper 
cantering forward cleared his point. The 


THE FORE AND AFT 


153 


Lancers kept between their prey and the steep 
hills, for all who could were trying to escape 
from the valley of death. The Highlanders 
gave the fugitives two hundred yards’ law, and 
then brought them down, gasping and choking 
ere they could reach the protection of the bowl- 
ders above. The Gurkhas followed suit; but 
the Fore and Aft were killing on their own ac- 
count, for they had penned a mass of men 
between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and 
the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded 
coats. 

“We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib!” 
panted a Ressaider of Lancers. “Let us try 
the carbine. The lance is good, but it wastes 
time.” 

They tried the carbine, and still the enemy 
melted away — fled up the hills by hundreds 
when there were only twenty bullets to stop 
them. On the heights the screw-guns ceased 
firing — thev had run out of ammunition — and 
the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire 
could not sufficiently smash the retreat. Long 
before the last volleys were fired, the litters 
were out in force looking for the wounded. 
The battle was over, and, but for want of fresh 
troops, the Afghans would have been wiped 
off the earth. As it was they counted their 


154 


THE DRUMS OF 


dead by hundreds, and nowhere were the dead 
thicker than in the track of the Fore and Aft. 

But the Regiment did not cheer with the 
Highlanders, nor did they dance uncouth 
dances with the Gurkhas among the dead. 
They looked under their brows at the Colonel 
as they leaned upon their rifles and panted. 

“Get back to camp, you. Haven’t you dis- 
graced yourself enough for one day! Go and 
look to the wounded. It’s all you’re fit for,” 
said the Colonel. Yet for the past hour the 
Fore and Aft had been doing all that mortal 
commander could expect. They had lost 
heavily because they did not know how to set 
about their business with proper skill, but they 
had borne themselves gallantly, and this was 
their reward. 

A young and sprightly Color-Sergeant, who 
had begun to imagine himself a hero, offered 
his water-bottle to a Highlander, whose tongue 
was black with thirst. “I drink with no 
cowards,” answered the youngster, huskily, 
and, turning to a Gurkha, said, “Hya, Johnny! 
Drink water got it ?” The Gurkha grinned and 
passed his bottle. The Fore and Aft said no 
word. 

They went back to camp when the field of 
strife had been a little mopped up and made 


THE FORE AND AFT 


155 


presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw him- 
self a Knight in three months, was the only 
soul who was complimentary to them. The 
Colonel was heart-broken and the officers were 
savage and sullen. 

“Well,” said the Brigadier, “they are young 
troops of course, and it was not unnatural that 
they should retire in disorder for a bit.” 

“Oh, my only Aunt Maria!” mummured a 
junior Staff Officer. “Retire in disorder! It 
was a bally run!” 

“But they came again as we all know,” cooed 
the Brigadier, the Colonel’s ashy-white face be- 
fore him, “and they behaved as well as could 
possibly be expected. Behaved beautifully, in- 
deed. I was watching them. It’s not a matter 
to take to heart, Colonel. As some German 
General said to his men, they wanted to be 
shooted over a little, that was all.” To him- 
self he said : “Now they’re blooded I can give 
’em responsible work. It’s as well that they got 
what they did. ’Teach ’em more than half a 
dozen rifle flirtations, that will — later — run 
alone and bite. Poor old Colonel, though.” 

All that afternoon the heliograph winked and 
flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good 
news to a mountain forty miles away. And in 
the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and 


THE DRUMS OF 


J 5 6 

sore, a misguided Correspondent who had gone 
out to assist at a trumpery village-burning and 
who had read off the message from afar, curs- 
ing his luck the while. 

“Let’s have the details somehow — as full as 
ever you can, please. It’s the first time I’ve 
ever been left this campaign,” said the Cor- 
respondent to the Brigadier ; and the Brigadier, 
nothing loath, told him how an Army of Com- 
munication had been crumpled up, destroyed, 
and all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, 
wisdom, and foresight of the Brigadier. 

But some say, and among these be the 
Gurkhas who watched on the hillside, that that 
battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little 
bodies were borne up just in time to fit two 
gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the 
dead under the heights of Jagai. 


CITY OF THE DREADFUL NIGHT 



CONTENTS 


CHAP, PAGE 


I. 

A Real Live City .... 


161 

II. 

The Reflections of a Savage 


170 

III. 

The Council of the Gods 


181 

IV. 

On the Banks of the Hugli 


194 

V. 

With the Calcutta Police . 


206 

VI. 

The City of Dreadful Night 


215 

VII. 

Deeper and Deeper Still . . 


229 

VIII. 

Concerning Lucia 


239 

IX. 

A Railway Settlement . . 


251 

X. 

The Mighty Shop .... 


262 • 

XI. 

At Vulcan’s Forge .... 


2 75 

XII. 

On the Surface 


288 

XIII. 

In the Depths 


300 

XIV. 

The Perils of the Pit . . . 


3 i 3 

XV. 

In an Opium Factory . . 0 


3 2 5 





























































CHAPTER I 


A REAL LIVE CITY 

\T7'E are all backwoodsmen and barbarians 
* * together — we others dwelling beyond 

the Ditch, in the outer darkness of the Mofus- 
sil. There are no such things as commission- 
ers and heads of departments in the world, and 
there is only one city in India. Bombay is too 
green, too pretty and too stragglesome ; and 
Madras died ever so long ago. Let us take off 
our hats to Calcutta, the many-sided, the 
smoky, the magnificent, as we drive in over the 
Hugh Bridge in the dawn of a still February 
morning. We have left India behind us at 
Howrah Station, and now we enter foreign 
parts. No, not wholly foreign. Say rather 
too familiar. 

All men of certain age know the feeling of 
caged irritation — an illustration in the 

Graphic, a bar of music or the light words of a 
friend from home may set it ablaze — that 
comes from the knowledge of our lost heritage 
of London. At home they, the other men, our 
161 


1 62 


CITY OF THE 


equals, have at their disposal all that town can 
supply — the roar of the streets, the lights, the 
music, the pleasant places, the millions of their 
own kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, 
fresh-colored English- women, theatres and 
restaurants. It is their right. They accept it 
as such, and even affect to look upon it with 
contempt. And we, we have nothing except 
the few amusements that we painfully build up 
for ourselves — the dolorous dissipations of 
gymkhanas where every one knows everybody 
else, or the chastened intoxication of dances 
where all engagements are booked, in ink, ten 
days ahead, and where everybody’s antece- 
dents are as patent as his or her method of 
waltzing. We have been deprived of our in- 
heritance. The men at home are enjoying it 
all, not knowing how fair and rich it is, and 
we at the most can only fly westward for a few 
months and gorge what, properly speaking, 
should take seven or eight or ten luxurious 
years. This is the lost heritage of London; 
and the knowledge of the forfeiture, wilful or 
forced, comes to most men at times and sea- 
sons, and they get cross. 

Calcutta holds out false hopes of some re- 
turn. The dense smoke hangs low, in the chill 
of the morning, over an ocean of roofs, and, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


163 


as the city wakes, there goes up to the smoke 
a deep, full-throated boom of life and motion 
and humanity. For this reason does he who 
sees Calcutta for the first time hang joyously 
out of the ticca- gharri and sniff the smoke, 
and turn his face toward the tumult, saying: 
“This is, at last, some portion of my heritage 
returned to me. This is a city. There is life 
here, and there should be all manner of pleas- 
ant things for the having, across the river and 
under the smoke.” When Leland, he who 
wrote the Hans Breitmann Ballads, once de- 
sired to know the name of an austere, plug- 
hatted red-skin of repute, his answer, from the 
lips of a half-bred, was : 

“He Injun. He big Injun. He heap big In- 
jun. He dam big heap Injun. He dam 
mighty great big heap Injun. He Jones!” 
The litany is an expressive one, and exactly 
describes the first emotions of a wandering 
savage adrift in Calcutta. The eye has lost its 
sense of proportion, the focus has contracted 
through overmuch residence in up-country sta- 
tions — twenty minutes’ canter from hospital 
to parade-ground, you know — and the mind 
has shrunk with the eye. Both say together, 
as they take in the sweep of shipping above 
and below the Hugh Bridge: “Why, this is 


164 


CITY OF THE 


London ! This is the docks. This is Imperial. 
This is worth coming across India to see !” 

Then a distinctly wicked idea takes posses- 
sion of the mind: “What a divine — what a 
heavenly place to loot!” This gives place to a 
much worse devil — that of Conservatism. It 
seems not only wrong but a criminal thing to 
allow natives to have any voice in the control 
of such a city — adorned, docked, wharfed, 
fronted and reclaimed by Englishmen, exist- 
ing only because England lives, and dependent 
for its life on England. All India knows of 
the Calcutta Municipality; but has any one 
thoroughly investigated the Big Calcutta 
Stink? There is only one. Benares is fouler 
in point of concentrated, pent-up muck, and 
there are local stenches in Peshawur which are 
stronger than the B. C. S. ; but, for diffused, 
soul-sickening expansiveness, the reek of Cal- 
cutta beats both Benares and Peshawur. 
Bombay cloaks her stenches with a veneer of 
assafoetida and hnqa- tobacco ; Calcutta is above 
pretence. There is no tracing back the Cal- 
cutta plague to any one source. It is faint, it 
is sickly, and it is indescribable ; but Americans 
at the Great Eastern Hotel say that it is some- 
thing like the smell of the Chinese quarter in 
San Francisco. It is certainly not an Indian 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


165 

smell. It resembles the essence of corruption 
that has rotted for the second time — the 
clammy odor of blue slime. And there is no 
escape from it. It blows across the maidan ; it 
comes in gusts into the corridors of the Great 
Eastern Hotel; what they are pleased to call 
the “Palaces of Chouringhi” carry it; it swirls 
round the Bengal Club; it pours out of by- 
streets with sickening intensity, and the breeze 
of the morning is laden with it. It is first 
found, in spite of the fume of the engines, in 
Howrah Station. It seems to be worst in the 
little lanes at the back of Lai Bazar where the 
drinking-shops are, but it is nearly as bad op- 
posite Government House and in the Public 
Offices. The thing is intermittent. Six mod- 
erately pure mouthfuls of air may be drawn 
without offence. Then comes the seventh 
wave and the queasiness of an uncultured 
stomach. If you live long enough in Calcutta 
you grow used to it. The regular residents ad- 
mit the disgrace, but their answer is : “Wait till 
the wind blows off the Salt Lakes where all the 
sewage goes, and then you’ll smell something.” 
That is their defence ! Small wonder that they 
consider Calcutta is a fit place for a permanent 
Viceroy. Englishmen who can calmly exten- 
uate one shame by another are capable of ask- 
ing for anything — and expecting to get it. 


CITY OF THE 


1 66 

If an up-country station holding three thou- 
sand troops and twenty civilians owned such 
a possession as Calcutta does, the Deputy 
Commissioner or the Cantonment Magistrate 
would have all the natives off the board of 
management or decently shoveled into the 
background until the mess was abated. Then 
they might come on again and talk of “high- 
handed oppression” as much as they liked. 
That stink, to an unprejudiced nose, damns 
Calcutta as a City of Kings. And, in spite of 
that stink, they allow, they even encourage, na- 
tives to look after the place! The damp, 
drainage-soaked soil is sick with the teeming 
life of a hundred years, and the Municipal 
Board list is choked with the names of natives 
— men of the breed born in and raised off this 
surfeited muck-heap ! They own property, 
these amiable Aryans on the Municipal and 
the Bengal Legislative Council. Launch a 
proposal to tax them on that property, and 
they naturally howl. They also howl up-coun- 
try, but there the halls for mass-meetings are 
few, and the vernacular papers fewer, and 
with a subbar dusti Secretary and a President 
whose favor is worth the having and whose 
wrath is undesirable, men are kept clean de- 
spite themselves, and may not poison their 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


167 


neighbors. Why, asks a savage, let them vote 
at all? They can put up with this filthiness. 
They cannot have any feelings worth caring 
a rush for. Let them live quietly and hide 
away their money under our protection, while 
we tax them till they know through their 
purses the measure of their neglect in the past, 
and when a little of the smell has been abol- 
ished, bring them back again to talk and take 
the credit of enlightenment. The better 
classes own their broughams and barouches; 
the worse can shoulder an Englishman into 
the kennel and talk to him as though he were 
a khitmatgar. They can refer to an English 
lady as an aurat; they are permitted a freedom 
— not to put it too coarsely — of speech which, 
if used by an Englishman toward an English- 
man, would end in serious trouble. They are 
fenced and protected and made inviolate. 
Surely they might be content with all those 
things without entering into matters which 
they cannot, by the nature of their birth, un- 
derstand. 

Now, whether all this genial diatribe be the 
outcome of an unbiased mind or the result first 
of sickness caused by that ferocious stench, 
and secondly of headache due to day-long 
smoking to drown the stench, is an open ques- 


CITY OF THE 


1 68 

tion. Anyway, Calcutta is a fearsome place 
for a man not educated up to it. 

A word of advice to other barbarians. Do 
not bring a north-country servant into Cal- 
cutta. He is sure to get into trouble, because* 
he does not understand the customs of the city. 
A Punjabi in this place for the first time es- 
teems it his bounden duty to go to the Ajaib- 
ghar — the Museum. Such an one has gone 
and is even now returned very angry and 
troubled in the spirit. “I went to the Mu- 
seum,” says he, “and no one gave me any gali. 
I went to the market to buy my food, and then 
I sat upon a seat. There came a chaprissi who 
said : ‘Go away, I want to sit here.' I said : T 
am here first.’ He said: T am a chaprissi! 
nikal jao!’ and he hit me. Now that sitting- 
place was open to all, so I hit him till he wept. 
He ran away for the Police, and I went away 
too, for the Police here are all Sahibs. Can I 
have leave from two o’clock to go and look 
for that chaprissi and hit him again?” 

Behold the situation ! An unknown city full 
of smell that makes one long for rest and re- 
tirement, and a champing naukar, not yet six 
hours in the stew, who has started a blood-feud 
with an unknown chaprissi and clamors to go 
forth to the fray. General orders that, what- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


169 


ever may be said or done to him, he must not 
say or do anything in return lead to an elo- 
quent harangue on the quality of izzat and the 
nature of “face blackening.” There is no 
izzat in Calcutta, and this Awful Smell black- 
ens the face of any Englishman who sniffs it. 

Alas! for the lost delusion of the heritage 
that was to be restored. Let us sleep, let us 
sleep, and pray that Calcutta may be better 
to-morrow. 

At present it is remarkably like sleeping 
with a corpse. 


CHAPTER II 

THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE 

Morning brings counsel. Does Calcutta 
smell so pestiferously after all? Heavy rain 
has fallen in the night. She is newly- washed, 
and the clear sunlight shows her at her best. 
Where, oh where, in all this wilderness of life 
shall a man go? Newman and Co. publish a 
three-rupee guide which produces first despair 
and then fear in the mind of the reader. Let 
us drop Newman and Co. out of the topmost 
window of the Great Eastern, trusting to luck 
and the flight of the hours to evolve wonders 
and mysteries and amusements. 

The Great Eastern hums with life through 
all its hundred rooms. Doors slam merrily, 
and all the nations of the earth run up and 
down the staircases. This alone is refreshing, 
because the passers bump you and ask you to 
stand aside. Fancy finding any place outside a 
Levee-room where Englishmen are crowded 
170 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


171 

together to this extent! Fancy sitting down 
seventy strong to table d’hote and with a deaf- 
ening clatter of knives and forks ! Fancy find- 
ing a real bar whence drinks may be obtained ! 
and, joy of joys, fancy stepping out of the 
hotel into the arms of a live, white, helmeted, 
buttoned, truncheoned Bobby! A beautiful, 
burly Bobby — just the sort of man who, 
seven thousand miles away, staves off the stut- 
tering witticism of the three-o’clock-in-the- 
morning reveler by the strong badged arm of 
authority. What would happen if one spoke 
to this Bobby? Would he be offended? He is 
not offended. He is affable. He has to patrol 
the pavement in front of the Great Eastern and 
to see that the crowding ticca-gharris do not 
jam. Toward a presumably respectable white 
he behaves as a man and a brother. There is no 
arrogance about him. And this is disappoint- 
ing. Closer inspection shows that he is not a 
real Bobby after all. He is a Municipal Police 
something and his uniform is not correct; at 
least if they have not changed the dress of the 
men at home. But no matter. Later on we 
will inquire into the Calcutta Bobby, because 
he is a white man, and has to deal with some 
of the “toughest” folk that ever set out of mal- 
ice aforethought to paint Job Charnock’s city 


IJ2 


CITY OF THE 


vermilion. You must not, you cannot cross 
Old Court House Street without looking care- 
fully to see that you stand no chance of being 
run over. This is beautiful. There is a steady 
roar of traffic, cut every two minutes by the 
deeper roll of the trams. The driving is eccen- 
tric, not to say bad, but there is the traffic — 
more that unsophisticated eyes have beheld for 
a certain number of years. It means business, 
it means money-making, it means crowded and 
hurrying life, and it gets into the blood and 
makes it move. Here be big shops with plate- 
glass fronts — all displaying the well-known 
names of firms that we savages only corre- 
spond with through the V. P. P. and Parcels 
Post. They are all here, as large as life, ready 
to supply anything you need if you only care 
to sign. Great is the fascination of being able 
to obtain a thing on the spot without having to 
write for a week and wait for a month, and 
then get something quite different. No won- 
der pretty ladies, who live anywhere within a 
reasonable distance, come down to do their 
shopping personally. 

“Look here. If you want to be respectable 
you mustn’t smoke in the streets. Nobody 
does it.” This is advice kindly tendered by a 
friend in a black coat. There is no Levee or 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


1 73 


Lieutenant-Governor in sight; but he wears 
the frock-coat because it is daylight, and he 
can be seen. He also refrains from smoking 
for the same reason. He admits that Provi- 
dence built the open air to be smoked in, but 
he says that “it isn’t the thing.” This man 
has a brougham, a remarkably natty little pill- 
box with a curious wabble about the wheels. 
He steps into the brougham and puts on — a 
top hat, a shiny black “plug.” 

There was a man up-country once who 
owned a top-hat. He leased it to amateur the- 
atrical companies for some seasons until the 
nap wore off. Then he threw it into a tree and 
wild bees hived in it. Men were wont to come 
and look at the hat, in its palmy days, for the 
sake of feeling homesick. It interested all the 
station, and died with two seers of babul flower 
honey in its bosom. But top-hats are not in- 
tended to be worn in India. They are as sa- 
cred as home letters and old rosebuds. The 
friend cannot see this. He allows that if he 
stepped out of his brougham and walked about 
in the sunshine for ten minutes he would get 
a bad headache. In half-an-hour he would 
probably catch sunstroke. He allows all this, 
but he keeps to his hat and cannot see why a 
barbarian is moved to inextinguishable laugh- 


174 


CITY OF THE 


ter at the sight. Every one who owns a 
brougham and many people who hire ticca- 
gharris keep top-hats and black frock-coats. 
The effect is curious, and at first fills the be- 
holder with surprise. 

And now, “let us see the handsome houses 
where the wealthy nobles dwell.” Northerly 
lies the great human jungle of the native city, 
stretching from Burra Bazar to Chitpore. 
That can keep. Southerly is the maidan and 
Chouringhi. “If you get out into the centre of 
the maidan you will understand why Calcutta 
is called the City of Palaces.” The traveled 
American said so at the Great Eastern. There 
is a short tower, falsely called a “memorial,” 
standing in a waste of soft, sour green. That 
is as good a place to get to as any other. Near 
here the newly-landed waler is taught the 
whole duty of the trap-horse and careers 
madly in a brake. Near here young Calcutta 
gets upon a horse and is incontinently run 
away with. Near here hundreds of kine feed, 
close to the innumerable trams and the whirl 
of traffic along the face of Chouringhi Road. 
The size of the maidan takes the heart out of 
any one accustomed to the “gardens” of up- 
country, just as they say Newmarket Heath 
cows a horse accustomed to a more shut-in 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


175 


course. The huge level is studded with brazen 
statues of eminent gentlemen riding fretful 
horses on diabolically severe curbs. The ex- 
panse dwarfs the statues, dwarfs everything 
except the frontage of the faraway Chour- 
inghi Road. It is big — it is impressive. There 
is no escaping the fact. They built houses in 
old days when the rupee was two shillings and 
a penny. Those houses are three-storied, and 
ornamented with service-staircases like houses 
in the Hills. They are also very close to- 
gether, and they own garden walls of pukka- 
masonry pierced with a single gate. In their 
shut-upness they are British. In their spa- 
ciousness they are Oriental, but those service- 
staircases do not look healthy. We will form 
an amateur sanitary commission and call upon 
Chouringhi. 

A first introduction to the Calcutta durwan 
is not nice. If he is chewing pan, he does not 
take the trouble to get rid of his quid. If he 
is sitting on his charpoy chewing sugarcane, 
he does not think it worth his while to rise. 
He has to be taught those things, and he can- 
not understand why he should be reproved. 
Clearly he is a survival of a played-out sys- 
tem. Providence never intended that any na- 
tive should be made a concierge more insolent 


176 


CITY OF THE 


than any of the French variety. The people 
of Calcutta put an Uria in a little lodge close 
to the gate of their house, in order that loafers 
may be turned away, and the houses protected 
from theft. The natural result is that the 
durwan treats everybody whom he does not 
know as a loafer, has an intimate and vendi- 
ble knowledge of all the outgoings and incom- 
ings in that house, and controls, to a large ex- 
tent, the nomination of the naukar-log. They 
say that one of the estimable class is now suing 
a bank for about three lakhs of rupees. Up- 
country, a Lieutenant-Governor’s chaprissi has 
to work for thirty years before he can retire 
on seventy thousand rupees of savings. The 
Calcutta durzvcm is a great institution. The 
head and front of his offence is that he will in- 
sist upon trying to talk English. How he pro- 
tects the houses Calcutta only knows. He can 
be frightened out of his wits by severe speech, 
and is generally asleep in calling hours. If a 
rough round of visits be any guide, three times 
out of seven he is fragrant of drink. So much 
for the durwan. Now for the houses he 
guards. 

Very pleasant is the sensation of being ush- 
ered into a pestiferously stablesome drawing- 
room. “Does this always happen?” “No, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


1 77 


not unless you shut up the room for some 
time; but if you open the jhilmills there are 
other smells. You see the stables and the ser- 
vants’ quarters are close too.” People pay 
five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms 
filled with attr of this kind. They make no 
complaint. When they think the honor of the 
city is at stake they say defiantly: “Yes, but 
you must remember we’re a metropolis. We 
are crowded here. We have no room. We 
aren’t like your little stations.” Chouringhi is 
a stately place full of sumptuous houses, but it 
is best to look at it hastily. Stop to consider 
for a moment what the cramped compounds, 
the black soaked soil, the netted intricacies of 
the service-staircases, the packed stables, the 
seethment of human life round the durwans * 
lodges and the curious arrangement of little 
open drains means, and you will call it a 
whited sepulchre. 

Men living in expensive tenements suffer 
from chronic sore-throat, and will tell you 
cheerily that “we’ve got typhoid in Calcutta 
now.” Is the pest ever out of it? Everything 
seems to be built with a view to its comfort. 
It can lodge comfortably on roofs, climb along 
from the gutter-pipe to piazza, or rise from 
sink to veranda and thence to the topmost 


i 7 8 


CITY OF THE 


story. But Calcutta says that all is sound and 
produces figures to prove it; at the same time 
admitting that healthy cut flesh will not read- 
ily heal. Further evidence may be dispensed 
with. 

Here come pouring down Park Street on 
the maidan a rush of broughams, neat buggies, 
the lightest of gigs, trim office brownberrys, 
shining victorias, and a sprinkling of veritable 
hansom cabs. In the broughams sit men in 
top-hats. In the other carts, young men, all 
very much alike, and all immaculately turned 
out. A fresh stream from Chouringhi joins 
the Park Street detachment, and the two to- 
gether stream away across the maidan toward 
the business quarter of the city. This is Cal- 
cutta going to office — the civilians to the Gov- 
ernment Buildings and the young men to their 
firms and their blocks and their wharves. Here 
one sees that Calcutta has the best turn-out in 
the Empire. Horses and traps alike are envia- 
bly perfect, and — mark the touchstone of civ- 
ilization — the lamps are in the sockets. This is 
distinctly refreshing. Once more we will take 
off our hats to Calcutta, the well-appointed, 
the luxurious. The country-bred is a rare 
beast here ; his place is taken by the waler, and 
the waler, though a ruffian at heart, can be 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


179 


made to look like a gentleman. It would be 
indecorous as well as insane to applaud the 
winking harness, the perfectly lacquered pan- 
els, and the liveried saises. They show well in 
the outwardly fair roads shadowed by the Pal- 
aces. 

How many sections of the complex society 
of the place do the carts carry ? Imprimis , the 
Bengal Civilian who goes to Writers’ Build- 
ings and sits in a perfect office and speaks flip- 
pantly of “sending things into India,” mean- 
ing thereby the Supreme Government. He is 
a great person, and his mouth is full of pro- 
motion-and-appointment “shop.” Generally he 
is referred to as a “rising man.” Calcutta 
seems full of “rising men.” Secondly , the 
Government of India man, who wears a famil- 
iar Simla face, rents a flat when he is not up 
in the Hills, and is rational on the subject of 
the drawbacks of Calcutta. Thirdly , the man 
of the “firms,” the pure non-official who fights 
under the banner of one of the great houses of 
the City, or for his own hand in a neat office, 
or dashes about Clive Street in a brougham 
doing “share work” or something of the kind. 
He fears not “Bengal,” nor regards he “In- 
dia.” He swears impartially at both when 
their actions interfere with his operations. 


i8o 


CITY OF THE 


His “shop” is quite unintelligible. He is like 
the English city man with the chill off, lives 
well and entertains hospitably. In the old 
days he was greater than he is now, but still he 
bulks large. He is rational in so far that he 
will help the abuse of the Municipality, but 
womanish in his insistence on the excellencies 
of Calcutta. Over and above these who are 
hurrying to work are the various brigades, 
squads and detachments of the other interests. 
But they are sets and not sections, and revolve 
round Belvedere, Government House, and 
Fort William. Simla and Darjeeling claim 
them in the hot weather. Let them go. They 
wear top-hats and frock-coats. 

It is time to escape from Chouringhi Road 
and get among the long-shore folk, who have 
no prejudices against tobacco, and who all use 
pretty nearly the same sort of hat. 


CHAPTER III 


THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS 


He set up conclusions to the number of nine thou- 
sand seven hundred and sixty four ... he went 
afterward to the Sorbonne, where he maintained argu- 
ment against the theologians for the space of six 
weeks, from four o’clock in the morning till six in the 
evening, except for an interval of two hours to refresh 
themselves and take their repasts, and at this were 
present the greatest part of the lords of the court, the 
masters of request, presidents, counsellors, those of the 
accompts, secretaries, advocates, and others; as also 
the sheriffs of the said town. — Pantagruel. 

“The Bengal Legislative Council is sitting 
now. You will find it in an octagonal wing of 
Writers’ Buildings: straight across the 
maidan. It’s worth seeing.” “What are they 
sitting on?” “Municipal business. No end of 
a debate.” So much for trying to keep low 
company. The long-shore loafers must stand 
over. Without doubt this Council is going to 
hang some one for the state of the City, and 
Sir Steuart Bayley will be chief executioner. 
One does not come across Councils every day. 

Writers’ Buildings are large. You can 
trouble the busy workers of half-a-dozen de- 
181 


CITY OF THE 


182 

partments before you stumble upon the black- 
stained staircase that leads to an upper cham- 
ber looking out over a populous street. Wild 
chaprissis block the way. The Councillor Sa- 
hibs are sitting, but any one can enter. “To 
the right of the Lat Sahib’s chair, and go 
quietly.” Ill-mannered minion! Does he ex- 
pect the awe-stricken spectator to prance in 
with a jubilant war-whoop or turn Catherine- 
wheels round that sumptuous octagonal room 
with the blue-domed roof ? There are gilt cap- 
itals to the half pillars and an Egyptian pat- 
terned lotus-stencil makes the walls decorously 
gay. A thick piled carpet covers all the floor, 
and must be delightful in the hot weather. 
On a black wooden throne, comfortably cush- 
ioned in green leather, sits Sir Steuart Bayley, 
Ruler of Bengal. The rest are all great men, 
or else they would not be there. Not to know 
them argues oneself unknown. There are a 
dozen of them, and sit six aside at two slightly 
curved lines of beautifully polished desks. 
Thus Sir Steuart Bayley occupies the frog of 
a badly made horseshoe split at the toe. In 
front of him, at a table covered with books 
and pamphlets and papers, toils a secretary. 
There is a seat for the Reporters, and that is 
all. The place enjoys a chastened gloom, and 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


183 


its very atmosphere fills one with awe. This 
is the heart of Bengal, and uncommonly well 
upholstered. If the work matches the first- 
class furniture, the inkpots, the carpet, and the 
resplendent ceiling, there will be something 
worth seeing. But where is the criminal who 
is to be hanged for the stench that runs up and 
down Writers’ Buildings staircases, for the 
rubbish heaps in the Chitpore Road, for the 
sickly savor of Chouringhi, for the dirty little 
tanks at the back of Belvedere, for the street 
full of smallpox, for the reeking gharri-stand 
outside the Great Eastern, for the state of the 
stone and dirt pavements, for the condition of 
the gullies of Shampooker, and for a hundred 
other things? 

“This, I submit, is an artificial scheme in 
supersession of Nature’s unit, the individual.” 
The speaker is a slight, spare native in a flat 
hat-turban, and a black alpaca frock-coat. He 
looks like a vakil to the boot-heels, and, with 
his unvarying smile and regulated gesticula- 
tion, recalls memories of up-country courts. 
He never hesitates, is never at a loss for a 
word, and never in one sentence repeats him- 
self. He talks and talks and talks in a level 
voice, rising occasionally half an octave when 
a point has to be driven home. Some of his 


184 


CITY OF THE 


periods sound very familiar. This, for in- 
stance, might be a sentence from the Mirror: 
“So much for the principle. Let us mow ex- 
amine how far it is supported by precedent. ” 
This sounds bad. When a fluent native is dis- 
coursing of “principles” and “precedents,” the 
chances are that he will go on for some time. 
Moreover, where is the criminal, and what is 
all this talk about abstractions? They want 
shovels not sentiments, in this part of the 
world. 

A friendly whisper brings enlightenment: 
“They are plowing through the Calcutta Mu- 
nicipal Bill — plurality of votes you know ; here 
are the papers.” And so it is ! A mass of mo- 
tions and amendments on matters relating to 
ward votes. Is A to be allowed to give two 
votes in one ward and one in another ? Is sec- 
tion ten to be omitted, and is one man to be 
allowed one vote and no more? How many 
votes does three hundred rupees’ worth of 
landed property carry? Is it better to kiss a 
post or throw it in the fire? Not a word 
about carbolic acid and gangs of domes. The 
little man in the black choga revels in his sub- 
ject. He is great on principles and precedents, 
and the necessity of “popularizing our sys- 
tem.” He fears that under certain circum- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


185 


stances “the status of the candidates will de- 
cline.” He riots in “self-adjusting majori- 
ties,” and the healthy influence of the educated 
middle classes. 

For a practical answer to this, there steals 
across the council chamber just one faint 
whiff. It is as though some one laughed low 
and bitterly. But no man heeds. The Eng- 
lishmen look supremely bored, the native 
members stare stolidly in front of them. Sir 
Steuart Bayley’s face is as set as the face of 
the Sphinx. For these things he draws his 
pay, and his is a low wage for heavy labor. 
But the speaker, now adrift, is not altogether 
to be blamed. He is a Bengali, who has got 
before him just such a subject as his soul lov- 
eth — an elaborate piece of academical reform 
leading no-whither. Here is a quiet room full 
of pens and papers. Apparently there is no 
time limit to the speeches. Can you wonder 
that he talks ? He says “I submit” once every 
ninety seconds, varying the form with “I do 
submit.” The popular element in the electoral 
body should have prominence. Quite so. He 
quotes one John Stuart Mill to prove it. 
There steals over the listener a numbing sense 
of nightmare. He has heard all this before 
somewhere — yea ; even down to J. S. Mill and 


CITY OF THE 


1 86 

the references to the “true interests of the rate- 
payers.” He sees what is coming next. Yes, 
there is the old Sabha Anjuman journalistic 
formula — “Western education is an exotic 
plant of recent importation.” How on earth 
did this man drag Western education into this 
discussion ? Who knows ? Perhaps Sir Steuart 
Bayley does. He seems to be listening. The 
others are looking at their watches. The spell 
of the level voice sinks the listener yet deeper 
into a trance. He is haunted by the ghosts of 
all the cant of all the political platforms of 
Great Britain. He hears all the old, old ves- 
try phrases, and once more he smells the smell. 
That is no dream. Western education is an 
exotic plant. It is the upas tree, and it is all 
our fault. We brought it out from England 
exactly as we brought out the ink bottles and 
the patterns for the chairs. We planted it and 
it grew — monstrous as a banian. Now we are 
choked by the roots of it spreading so thickly 
in this fat soil of Bengal. The speaker con- 
tinues. Bit by bit. We builded this dome, 
visible and invisible, the crown of Writers’ 
Buildings, as we have built and peopled the 
buildings. Now we have gone too far to re- 
treat, being “tied and bound with the chain of 
our own sins.” The speech continues. We 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


187 


made that florid sentence. That torrent of 
verbiage is ours. We taught him what was 
constitutional and what was unconstitutional 
in the days when Calcutta smelt. Calcutta 
smells still, but we must listen to all that he has 
to say about the plurality of votes and the 
threshing of wind and the weaving of ropes of 
sand. It is our fault absolutely. 

The speech ends, and there rises a grey Eng- 
lishman in a black frock-coat. He looks a 
strong man, and a worldly. Surely he will 
say: “Yes, Lala Sahib, all this may be true 
talk, but there’s a hurra krab smell in this 
place, and everything must be safkaroed in a 
week, or the Deputy Commissioner will not 
take any notice of you in durbar ” He says 
nothing of the kind. This is a Legislative 
Council, where they call each other “Honor- 
able So-and-So’s.” The Englishman in the 
frock-coat begs all to remember that “we are 
discussing principles, and no consideration of 
the details ought to influence the verdict on 
the principles.” Is he then like the rest ? How 
does this strange thing come about ? Perhaps 
these so English office fittings are responsible 
for the warp. The Council Chamber might 
be a London Board-room. Perhaps after long 
years among the pens and papers its occupants 


CITY OF THE 


1 88 

grow to think that it really is, and in this be- 
lief give resumes of the history of Local Self- 
Government in England. 

The black frock-coat, emphasizing his points 
with his spectacle-case, is telling his friends 
how the parish was first the unit of self-gov- 
ernment. He then explains how burgesses 
were elected, and in tones of deep fervor an- 
nounces : “Commissioners of Sewers are 
elected in the same way.” Whereunto all this 
lecture? Is he trying to run a motion through 
under cover of a cloud of words, essaying the 
well-known “cuttle-fish rick” of the West? 

He abandons England for a while, and now 
we get a glimpse of the cloven hoof in a casual 
reference to Hindus and Mahomedans. The 
Hindus will lose nothing by the complete es- 
tablishment of plurality of votes. They will 
have the control of their own wards as they 
used to have. So there is race-feeling, to be 
explained away, even among these beautiful 
desks. Scratch the Council, and you come to 
the old, old trouble. The black frock-coat sits 
down, and a keen-eyed, black-bearded Eng- 
lishman rises with one hand in his pocket to 
explain his views on an alteration of the vote 
qualification. The idea of an amendment 
seems to have just struck him. He hints that 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


189 


he will bring it forward later on. He is aca- 
demical like the others, but not half so good a 
speaker. All this is dreary beyond words. 
Why do they talk and talk about owners and 
occupiers and burgesses in England and the 
growth of autonomous institutions when the 
city, the great city, is here crying out to be 
cleansed? What has England to do with Cal- 
cutta’s evil, and why should Englishmen be 
forced to wander through mazes of unprofit- 
able argument against men who cannot under- 
stand the iniquity of dirt? 

A pause follows the black-bearded man’s 
speech. Rises another native, a heavily-built 
Babu, in a black gown and a strange head- 
dress. A snowy white strip of cloth is thrown 
jharun - wise over his shoulders. His voice is 
high, and not always under control. He be- 
gins : “I will try to be as brief as possible.” 
This is ominous. By the way, in Council there 
seems to be no necessity for a form of address. 
The orators plunge in medias res , and only 
when they are well launched throw an occa- 
sional “Sir” toward Sir Steuart Bayley, who 
sits with one leg doubled under him and a dry 
pen in his hand. This speaker is no good. He 
talks, but he says nothing, and he only knows 
where he is drifting to. He says: “We must 


190 


CITY OF THE 


remember that we are legislating for the Me- 
tropolis of India, and therefore we should 
borrow our institutions from large English 
towns, and not from parochial institutions.” 
If you think for a minute, that shows a large 
and healthy knowledge of the history of Local 
Self-Government. It also reveals the attitude 
of Calcutta. If the city thought less about it- 
self as a metropolis and more as a midden, its 
state would be better. The speaker talks pat- 
ronizingly of “my friend,” alluding to the 
black frock-coat. Then he flounders afresh, 
and his voice gallops up the gamut as he de- 
clares, “and therefore that makes all the differ- 
ence.” He hints vaguely at threats, something 
to do with the Hindus and the Mahomedans, 
but what he means it is difficult to discover. 
Here, however, is a sentence taken verbatim . 
It is not likely to appear in this form in the 
Calcutta papers. The black frock-coat had 
said that if a wealthy native “had eight votes 
to his credit, his vanity would prompt him to 
go to the polling-booth, because he would feel 
better than half-a-dozen gharri-wans or petty 
traders.” (Fancy allowing a gharri-wan to 
vote! He has yet to learn how to drive!) 
Hereon the gentleman with the white cloth: 
“Then the complaint is that influential voters 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


191 


will not take the trouble to vote. In my hum- 
ble opinion, if that be so, adopt voting papers. 
That is the way to meet them. In the same 
way — The Calcutta Trades’ Association — you 
abolish all plurality of votes: and that is the 
way to meet them.” Lucid, is it not ? Up flies 
the irresponsible voice, and delivers this state- 
ment : “In the election for the House of Com- 
mons plurality are allowed for persons having 
interest in different districts.” Then hopeless, 
hopeless fog. It is a great pity that India ever 
heard of anybody higher than the heads of the 
Civil Service. The country appeals from the 
Chota to the Burra Sahib all too readily as it is. 
Once more a whiff. The gentleman gives a 
defiant jerk of his shoulder-cloth, and sits 
down. 

Then Sir Steuart Bayley : “The question be- 
fore the Council is.” etc. There is a ripple of 
“Ayes” and “Noes,” and the “Noes” have it, 
whatever it may be. The black-bearded gen- 
tleman springs his amendment about the vot- 
ing qualifications. A large senator in a white 
waistcoat, and with a most genial smile, rises 
and proceeds to smash up the amendment. 
Can’t see the use of it. Calls it in effect rub- 
bish. The black frock-coat rises to explain his 
friend’s amendment, and incidentally makes a 


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funny little slip. He is a knight, and his 
friend has been newly knighted. He refers to 
him as “Mister.” The black choga, he who 
spoke first of all, speaks again, and talks of the 
“sojourner who comes here for a little time, 
and then leaves the land.” Well it is for the 
black choga that the sojourner does come, or 
there would be no comfy places wherein to 
talk about the power that can be measured by 
wealth and the intellect “which, sir, I submit, 
cannot be so measured.” The amendment is 
lost, and trebly and quadruply lost is the lis- 
tener. In the name of sanity and to preserve 
the tattered shirt tails of a torn illusion, let us 
escape. This is the Calcutta Municipal Bill. 
They have been at it for several Saturdays. 
Last Saturday Sir Steuart Bayley pointed out 
that at their present rate they would be about 
two years in getting it through. Now they 
will sit till dusk, unless Sir Steuart Bayley, 
who wants to see Lord Connemara off, puts 
up the black frock-coat to move an adjourn- 
ment. It is not good to see a Government 
close to. This leads to the formation of bla- 
tantly self-satisfied judgments, which may be 
quite as wrong as the cramping system with 
which we have encompassed ourselves. And 
in the streets outside Englishmen summarize 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


193 


the situation brutally, thus: “The whole thing 
is a farce. Time is money to us. We can’t 
stick out those everlasting speeches in the mu- 
nicipality. The natives choke us off, but we 
know that if things get too bad the Govern- 
ment will step in and interfere, and so we 
worry along somehow.” Meantime Calcutta 
continues to cry out for the bucket and the 
broom. 


CHAPTER IV 


ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI 

The clocks of the city have struck two. 
Where can a man get food? Calcutta is not 
rich in respect of dainty accommodation. You 
can stay your stomach at Peliti’s or Bonsard’s, 
but their shops are not to be found in Hastings 
Street, or in the places where brokers fly to and 
fro in office- jauns, sweating and growing 
visibly rich . There must be some sort of en- 
tertainment where sailors congregate. “Honest 
Bombay Jack” supplies nothing but Burma 
cheroots and whisky in liquor-glasses, but in 
Lai Bazar, not far from “The Sailors’ Coffee- 
rooms,” a board gives bold advertisement that 
“officers and seamen can find good quarters.” 
In evidence a row of neat officers and seamen 
are sitting on a bench by the “hotel” door 
smoking. There is an almost military likeness 
in their clothes. Perhaps “Honest Bombay 
Jack” only keeps one kind of felt hat and one 
brand of suit. When Jack of the mercantile 
marine is sober, he is very sober. When he is 
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DREADFUL NIGHT 


l 95 


drunk he is — but ask the river police what a 
lean, mad Yankee can do with his nails and 
teeth. These gentlemen smoking on the bench 
are impassive almost as Red Indians. Their 
attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not 
wear braces. Nor, it would appear from the 
bill of fare, are they particular as to what they 
eat when they attend table d’hote. The fare is 
substantial and the regulation peg — every 
house has its own depth of peg if you will re- 
frain from stopping Ganymede — something to 
wonder at. Three fingers and a trifle over 
seems to be the use of the officers and seamen 
who are talking so quietly in the doorway. 
One says — he has evidently finished a long 
story — “and so he shipped for four pound ten 
with a first mate's certificate and all, and that 
was in a German barque.” Another spits with 
conviction and says genially, without raising 
his voice: “That was a hell of a ship; who 
knows her?” No answer from the panchayet, 
but a Dane or a German wants to know 
whether the Myra is “up” yet. A dry, red- 
haired man gives her exact position in the river 
— (How in the world can he know?) — and the 
probable hour of her arrival. The grave de- 
bate drifts into a discussion of a recent river 
accident, whereby a big steamer was damaged, 


196 


CITY OF THE 


and had to put back and discharge cargo. A 
burly gentleman who is taking a constitutional 
down Lai Bazar strolls up and says: “I tell 
you she fouled her own chain with her own 
forefoot. Hev you seen the plates?” “No.” 

“Then how the can any like you 

say what it well was?” He passes 

on, having delivered his highly-flavored opin- 
ion without heat or passion. No one seems to 
resent the expletives. 

Let us get down to the river and see this 
stamp of men more thoroughly. Clarke Russell 
has told us that their lives are hard enough in 
all conscience. What are their pleasures and 
diversions? The Port Office, where live the 
gentlemen who make improvements in the Port 
of Calcutta, ought to supply information. It 
stands large and fair, and built in an oriental- 
ized manner after the Italians at the corner of 
Fairlie Place upon the great Strand Road, and 
a continual clamor of traffic by land and by 
sea goes up throughout the day and far into 
the night against its windows. This is a place 
to enter more reverently than the Bengal Legis- 
lative Council, for it houses the direction of the 
uncertain Hugh down to the Sandheads, owns 
enormous wealth, and spends huge sums on the 
frontaging of river banks, the expansion of 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


197 


jetties, and the manufacture of docks costing 
two hundred lakhs of rupees. Two million tons 
of sea-going shippage yearly find their way up 
and down the river by the guidance of the Port 
Office, and the men of the Port Office know 
more than it is good for men to hold in their 
heads. They can without reference to tele- 
graphic bulletins give the position of all the big 
steamers, coming up or going down, from the 
Hugh to the sea, day by day with their ton- 
nage, the names of their captains and the nature 
of their cargo. Looking out from the veranda 
of their offices over a lancer-regiment of masts, 
they can declare truthfully the name of every 
ship within eye-scope, with the day and hour 
when she will depart. 

In a room at the bottom of the building 
lounge big men, carefully dressed. Now there 
is a type of face which belongs almost exclu- 
sively to Bengal Cavalry officers — majors for 
choice. Everybody knows the bronzed, black- 
moustached, clear-speaking Native Cavalry 
officer. He exists unnaturally in novels, and 
naturally on the frontier. These men in the 
big room have its caste of face so strongly 
marked that one marvels what officers are do- 
ing by the river. “Have they come to book 
passengers for home?” “Those men! They’re 


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CITY OF THE 


pilots. Some of them draw between two and 
three thousand rupees a month. They are re- 
sponsible for half-a-million pounds’ worth of 
cargo sometimes.” They certainly are men, 
and they carry themselves as such. They con- 
fer together by twos and threes, and appeal fre- 
quently to shipping lists. 

“Isn’t a pilot a man who always wears a 
pea jacket and shouts through a speaking- 
trumpet?” “Well, you can ask those gentle- 
men if you like. You’ve got your notions from 
home pilots. Ours aren’t that kind exactly. 
They are a picked service, as carefully weeded 
as the Indian Civil. Some of ’em have 
brothers in it, and some belong to the old Indian 
army families.” But they are not all equally 
well paid. The Calcutta papers sometimes 
echo the groans of the junior pilots who are 
not allowed the handling of ships over a cer- 
tain tonnage. As it is yearly growing cheaper 
to build one big steamer than two little ones, 
these juniors are crowded out, and, while the 
seniors get their thousands, some of the young- 
sters make at the end of one month exactly 
thirty rupees. This is a grievance with them; 
and it seems well-founded. 

In the flats above the pilots’ room are hushed 
and chapel-like offices, all sumptuously fitted, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


199 


where Englishmen write and telephone and 
telegraph, and deft Babus forever draw maps 
of the shifting Hugh. Any hope of under- 
standing the work of the Port Commissioners 
is thoroughly dashed by being taken through 
the Port maps of a quarter of a century past. 
Men have played with the Hugh as children 
play with a gutter-runnel, and, in return, the 
Hugh once rose and played with men and ships 
till the Strand Road was littered with the raffle 
and the carcasses of big ships. There are 
photos on the walls of the cyclone of ’64, when 
the Thunder came inland and sat upon an 
American barque, obstructing all the traffic. 
Very curious are these photos, and almost im- 
possible to believe. How can a big, strong 
steamer have her three masts razed to deck 
level? How can a heavy, country boat be 
pitched on to the poop of a high-walled liner? 
and how can the side be bodily torn out of a 
ship ? The photos say that all these things are 
possible, and men aver that a cyclone may come 
again and scatter the craft like chaff. Outside 
the Port Office are the export and import sheds, 
buildings that can hold a ship’s cargo a-piece, 
all standing on reclaimed ground. Here be 
several strong smells, a mass of railway lines, 
and a multitude of men. “Do you see where 


200 


CITY OF THE 


that trolly is standing, behind the big P. and O. 
berth? In that place as nearly as may be the 
Govindpur went down about twenty years ago, 
and began to shift out!” “But that is solid 
ground.” “She sank there, and the next tide 
made a scour-hole on one side of her. The re- 
turning tide knocked her into it. Then the mud 
made up behind her. Next tide the business 
was repeated — always the scour-hole in the 
mud and the filling up behind her. So she 
rolled and was pushed out and out until she 
got in the way of the shipping right out yon- 
der, and we had to blow her up. When a ship 
sinks in mud or quicksand she regularly digs 
her own grave and wriggles herself into it 
deeper and deper till she reaches moderately 
solid stuff. Then she sticks.” Horrible idea, is 
it not, to go down and down with each tide 
into the foul Hugh mud ? 

Close to the Port Offices is the Shipping 
Office, where the captains engage their crews. 
The men must produce their discharges from 
their last ships in the presence of the shipping 
master, or as they call him — “The Deputy 
Shipping.” He passes them as correct after 
having satisfied himself that they are not de- 
serters from other ships, and they then sign 
articles for the voyage. This is the ceremony, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


201 


beginning with the “dearly beloved” of the 
crew-hunting captain down to “amazement” of 
the identified deserter. There is a dingy build- 
ing, next door to the Sailors’ Home, at whose 
gate stand the cast-ups of all the seas in all 
manner of raiment. There are Seedee boys, 
Bombay serangs and Madras fishermen of the 
salt villages, Malays who insist upon marrying 
native women grow jealous and run amok: 
Malay-Hindus, Hindu-Malay-whites, Burmese, 
Burma-whites, Burma-native-whites, Italians 
with gold earrings and a thirst for gambling, 
Yankees of all the States, with Mulattoes and 
pure buck-niggers, red and rough Danes, 
Cingalese, Cornish boys who seem fresh taken 
from the plough-tail,” “corn-stalks” from colo- 
nial ships where they got four pound ten a 
month as seamen, tun-bellied Germans, Cock- 
ney mates keeping a little aloof from the crowd 
and talking in knots together, unmistakable 
“Tommies” who have tumbled into seafaring 
life by some mistake, cockatoo-tufted Welsh- 
men spitting and swearing like cats, broken- 
down loafers, grey-headed, penniless, and piti- 
ful, swaggering boys, and very quiet men with 
gashes and cuts on their faces. It is an ethno- 
logical museum where all the specimens are 
playing comedies and tragedies. The head of 
it all is the “Deputy Shipping,” and he sits, 


202 


CITY OF THE 


supported by an English policeman whose fists 
are knobby, in a great Chair of State. The 
“Deputy Shipping” knows all the iniquity of 
the riverside, all the ships, all the captains, and 
a fair amount of the men. He is fenced 
off from the crowd by a strong wooden 
railing, behind which are gathered those 
who “stand and wait,” the unemployed 
of the mercantile marine. They have had their 
spree — poor devils — and now they will go to 
sea again on as low a wage as three pound ten 
a month, to fetch up at the end in some Shang- 
hai stew or San Francisco hell. They have 
turned their backs on the seductions of the 
Howrah boarding-houses and the delights of 
Colootollah. If Fate will, “Nightingales” will 
know them no more for a season, and their suc- 
cessors may paint Collinga Bazar vermilion. 
But what captain will take some of these bat- 
tered, shattered wrecks whose hands shake and 
whose eyes are red ? 

Enter suddenly a bearded captain, who has 
made his selection from the crowd on a pre- 
vious day, and now wants to get his men 
passed. He is not fastidious in his choice. His 
eleven seem a tough lot for such a mild-eyed, 
civil-spoken man to manage. But the captain 
in the Shipping Office and the captain on the 
ship are two different things. He brings his 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


203 


crew up to the “Deputy Shipping’s” bar, and 
hands in their greasy, tattered discharges. But 
the heart of the “Deputy Shipping” is hot with- 
in him, because, two days ago, a Howrah crimp 
stole a whole crew from a down-dropping ship, 
insomuch that the captain had to come back 
and whip up a new crew at one o’clock in the 
day. Evil will it be if the “Deputy Shipping” 
finds one of these bounty- jumpers in the chosen 
crew of the Blenkindoon , let us say. 

The “Deputy Shipping” tells the story with 
heat. “I didn’t know they did such things in 
Calcutta,” says the captain. “Do such things ! 
They’d steal the eye-teeth out of your head 
there, Captain.” He picks up a discharge and 
calls for Michael Donelly, who is a loose-knit, 
vicious-looking Irish- American who chews. 
“Stand up, man, stand up!” Michael Donelly 
wants to lean against the desk, and the English 
policeman won’t have it. “What was your last 
ship?” “Fairy Queen ” “When did you leave 
her?” “ ’Bout ’leven days.” “Captain’s name?” 
“Flahy.” “That’ll do. Next man: Jules An- 
derson.” Jules Anderson is a Dane. His 
statements tally with the discharge-certificate 
of the United States, as the Eagle attesteth. 
He is passed and falls back. Slivey, the Eng- 
lishman, and David, a huge plum-colored negro 


204 


CITY OF THE 


who ships as cook are also passed. Then comes 
Bassompra, a little Italian, who speaks English. 
“What’s your last ship?” “Ferdinand.” “No, 
after that?” “German barque.” Bassompra 
does not look happy. “When did she sail?” 
“About three weeks ago.” “What’s her 
name?” “ Haidee “You deserted from 
her?” “Yes, but she’s left port.” The “Dep- 
uty Shipping” runs rapidly through a shipping- 
list, throws it down with a bang. “ ’Twon’t 
do. No German barque Haidee here for three 
months. How do I know you don’t belong to 
the Jackson's crew ? Cap’ain, I’m afraid you’ll 
have to ship another man. He must stand 
over. Take the rest away and make ’em sign.” 

The bead-eyed Bassompra seems to have lost 
his chance of a voyage, and his case will be in- 
quired into. The captain departs with his men 
and they sign articles for the voyage, while the 
“Deputy Shipping” tells strange tales of the 
sailorman’s life. “They’ll quit a good ship for 
the sake of a spree, and catch on again at three 
pound ten, and by Jove, they’ll let their skippers 
pay ’em at ten rupees to the sovereign — poor 
beggars ! As soon as the money’s gone they’ll 
ship, but not before. Every one under rank of 
captain engages here. The competition makes 
first mates ship sometimes for five pounds or 
as low as four ten a month.” (The gentleman 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


205 


in the boarding-house was right, you see.) 
“A first mate’s wages are seven ten or eight, 
and foreign captains ship for twelve pounds a 
month and bring their own small stores — 
everything, that is to say, except beef, peas, 
flour, coffee and molasses.” 

These things are not pleasant to listen to 
while the hungry-eyed men in the bad clothes 
lounge and scratch and loaf behind the railing. 
What comes to them in the end? They die, it 
seems, though that is not altogether strange. 
They die at sea in strange and horrible ways; 
they die, a few of them, in the Kintals, being 
lost and suffocated in the great sink of Cal- 
cutta; they die in strange places by the water- 
side, and the Hugh takes them away under the 
mooring chains and the buoys, and casts them 
up on the sands below, if the River Police have 
missed the capture. They sail the sea because 
they must live; and there is no end to their 
toil. Very, very few find haven of any kind, 
and the earth, whose ways they do not under- 
stand, is cruel to them, when they walk upon 
it to drink and be merry after the manner of 
beasts. Jack ashore is a pretty thing when he 
is in a book or in the blue jacket of the Navy. 
Mercantile Jack is not so lovely. Later on, 
we will see where his “sprees” lead him. 


CHAPTER V 


WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE 

“The City was of Night — perchance of Death, 

But certainly of Night.” 

— The City of Dreadful Night. 

In the beginning, the Police were respon- 
sible. They said in a patronizing way that, 
merely as a matter of convenience, they would 
prefer to take a wanderer round the great city 
themselves, sooner than let him contract a 
broken head on his own account in the slums. 
They said that there were places and places 
where a white man, unsupported by the arm of 
the law, would be robbed and mobbed ; and that 
there were other places where drunken seamen 
would make it very unpleasant for him. There 
was a night fixed for the patrol, but apologies 
were offered beforehand for the comparative 
insignificance of the tour. 

“Come up to the fire lookout in the first 
place, and then you’ll be able to see the city.” 

206 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


207 


This was at No. 22, Lai Bazar, which is the 
headquarters of the Calcutta Police, the centre 
of the great web of telephone wires where Jus- 
tice sits all day and all night looking after one 
million people and a floating population of one 
hundred thousand. But her work shall be 
dealt with later on. The fire lookout is a little 
sentry-box on the top of the three-storied police 
offices. Here a native watchman waits always, 
ready to give warning to the brigade below if 
the smoke rises by day or the flames by night 
in any ward of the city. From this eyrie, in 
the warm night, one hears the heart of Calcutta 
beating. Northward, the city stretches away 
three long miles, with three more miles of 
suburbs beyond, to Dum-Dum and Barrack- 
pore. The lamplit dusk on this side is full of 
noises and shouts and smells. Close to the 
Police Office, jovial mariners at the sailors’ 
coffee-shop are roaring hymns. Southerly, the 
city’s confused lights give place to the orderly 
lamp-rows of the maidan and Chouringhi, 
where the respectabilities live and the Police 
have very little to do. From the east goes up 
to the sky the clamor of Sealdah, the rumble 
of the trains and the voices of all Bow Bazar 
chaffering and making merry. Westward are 
the business quarters, hushed now, the lamps 


208 


CITY OF THE 


of the shipping on the river, and the twinkling 
lights on the Howrah side. It is a wonderful 
sight — this Pisgah view of a huge city resting 
after the labors of the day. “Does the noise 
of traffic go on all through the hot weather ?” 
“Of course. The hot months are the busiest in 
the year and money’s tightest. You should see 
the brokers cutting about at that season. Cal- 
cutta can't stop, my dear sir.” “What happens 
then?” “Nothing happens; the death-rate goes 
up a little. That’s all!” Even in February, 
the weather would, up-country, be called 
muggy and stifling, but Calcutta is convinced 
that it is her cold season. The noises of the 
city grow perceptibly; it is the night side of 
Calcutta waking up and going abroad. Jack in 
the sailors’ coffee-shop is singing joyously: 
“Shall we gather at the River — the beauti- 
ful, the beautiful, the River?” What an in- 
congruity there is about his selections. How- 
ever, that it amuses before it shocks the 
listeners, is not to be doubted. An English- 
man, far from his native land is liable to 
become careless, and it would be remarkable if 
he did otherwise in ill-smelling Calcutta. There 
is a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below. 
Some of the Mounted Police have come in from 
somewhere or other out of the great darkness. 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


209 


A clog-dance of iron hoofs follows, and an 
Englishman’s voice is heard soothing an 
agitated horse who seems to be standing on 
his hind legs. Some of the Mounted Police 
are going out into the great darkness. “What’s 
on?” “Walk round at Government House. 
The Reserve men are being formed up below. 
They’re calling the roll.” The Reserve men 
are all English, and big English at that. They 
form up and tramp out of the courtyard to line 
Government Place, and see that Mrs. Lollipop’s 
brougham does not get smashed up by Sirdar 
Chuckerbutty Bahadur’s lumbering C-spring 
barouche with the two raw Walers. Very 
military men are the Calcutta European Police 
in their set-up, and he who knows their com- 
position knows some startling stories of gen- 
tlemen-rankers and the like. They are, despite 
the wearing climate they work in and the wear- 
ing work they do, as fine five-score of English- 
men as you shall find east of Suez. 

Listen for a moment from the fire lookout to 
the voices of the night, and you will see why 
they must be so. Two thousand sailors of fifty 
nationalities are adrift in Calcutta every Sun- 
day, and of these perhaps two hundred are dis- 
tinctly the worse for liquor. There is a mild 
row going on, even now, somewhere at the back 


210 


CITY OF THE 


of Bow Bazar, which at nightfall fills with 
sailor-men who have a wonderful gift of fall- 
ing foul of the native population. To keep the 
Queen’s peace is of course only a small portion 
of Police duty, but it is trying. The burly 
president of the lock-up for European drunks 
— Calcutta central lock-up is worth seeing — 
rejoices in a sprained thumb just now, and has 
to do his work left-handed in consequence. 
But his left hand is a marvelously persuasive 
one, and when on duty his sleeves are turned 
up to the shoulder that the jovial mariner may 
see that there is no deception. The president’s 
labors are handicapped in that the road of sin 
to the lock-up runs through a grimy little gar- 
den — the brick paths are worn deep with the 
tread of many drunken feet — where a man can 
give a great deal of trouble by sticking his toes 
into the ground and getting mixed up with the 
shrubs. “A straight run in” would be much 
more convenient both for the president and the 
drunk. Generally speaking — and here Police 
experience is pretty much the same all over the 
civilized world — a woman drunk is a good deal 
worse than a man drunk. She scratches and 
bites like a Chinaman and swears like several 
fiends. Strange people may be unearthed in 
the lock-ups. Here is a perfectly true story, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


21 1 


not three weeks old. A visitor, an unofficial 
one, wandered into the native side of the spa- 
cious accommodation provided for those who 
have gone or done wrong. A wild-eyed Babu 
rose from the fixed charpoy and said in the 
best of English : “Good-morning, sir.” “Good- 
morning; who are you, and what are you in 
for?” Then the Babu, in one breath: “I 
would have you know that I do not go to prison 
as a criminal but as a reformer. You’ve read 
the Vicar of Wakefield ”? “Ye-es.” “Well, I 
am the Vicar of Bengal — at least that’s what I 
call myself.” The visitor collapsed. He had 
not nerve enough to continue the conversation. 
Then said the voice of the authority: “He’s 
down in connection with a cheating case at 
Serampore. May be shamming. But he’ll be 
looked to in time.” 

The best place to hear about the Police is 
the fire lookout. From that eyrie one can see 
how difficult must be the work of control over 
the great, growling beast of a city. By all 
means let us abuse the Police, but let us see 
what the poor wretches have to do with their 
three thousand natives and one hundred Eng- 
lishmen. From Howrah and Bally and the 
other suburbs at least a hundred thousand peo- 
ple come in to Calcutta for the day and leave 


212 


CITY OF THE 


at night. Also Chandernagore is handy for 
the fugitive law-breaker, who can enter in the 
evening and get away before the noon of the 
next day, having marked his house and broken 
into it. 

“But how can the prevalent offence be house- 
breaking in a place like this ?” “Easily enough. 
When you’ve seen a little of the city, you’ll see. 
Natives sleep and lie about all over the place, 
and whole quarters are just so many rabbit- 
warrens. Wait till you see the Machua Bazar. 
Well, besides the petty theft and burglary, we 
have heavy cases of forgery and fraud, that 
leave us with our wits pitted against a Ben- 
gali’s. When a Bengali criminal is working a 
fraud of the sort he loves, he is about the 
cleverest soul you could wish for. He gives us 
cases a year long to unravel. Then there are 
the murders in the low houses — very curious 
things they are. You’ll see the house where 
Sheikh Babu was murdered presently, and 
you’ll understand. The Burra Bazar and Jora 
Bagan sections are the two worst ones for 
heavy cases; but Colootollah is the most ag- 
gravating. There’s Colootollah over yonder — 
that patch of darkness beyond the lights. That 
section is full of tuppenny-ha’-penny petty 
cases, that keep the men up all night and make 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


213 


’em swear. You’ll see Colootollah, and then 
perhaps you’ll understand. Bamun Bustee is 
the quietest of all, and Lai Bazar and Bow 
Bazar, as you can see for yourself, are the 
rowdiest. You’ve no notion what the natives 
come to the thannahs for. A naukar will come 
in and want a summons against his master for 
refusing him half-an-hour’s chuti. I suppose 
it does seem rather revolutionary to an up- 
country man, but they try to do it here. Now 
wait a minute, before we go down into the city 
and see the Fire Brigade turned out. Business 
is slack with them just now, but you time ’em 
and see.” An order is given, and a bell strikes 
softly thrice. There is an orderly rush of men, 
the click of a bolt, a red fire-engine, spitting 
and swearing with the sparks flying from the 
furnace, is dragged out of its shelter. A huge 
brake, which holds supplementary horses, men, 
and hatchets, follows, and a hose-cart is the 
third on the list. The men push the heavy 
things about as though they were pith toys. 
Five horses appear. Two are shot into the 
fire-engine, two — monsters these — into the 
brake, and the fifth, a powerful beast, war- 
ranted to trot fourteen miles an hour, backs 
into the hose-cart shafts. The men clamber 
up, some one says softly, “All ready there,” 


214 


CITY OF THE 


and with an angry whistle the fire-engine, fol- 
lowed by the other two, flies out into Lai Bazar, 
the sparks trailing behind. Time — i min. 40 
secs. “They’ll find out it’s a false alarm, and 
come back again in five minutes.” “Why?” 
“Because there will be no constables on the road 
to give ’em the direction of the fire, and because 
the driver wasn’t told the ward of the outbreak 
when he went out !” “Do you mean to say that 
you can from this absurd pigeon-loft locate the 
wards in the night-time?” “Of course: what 
would be the good of a lookout if the man 
couldn’t tell where the fire was ?” “But it’s all 
pitchy black, and the lights are so confusing.” 

“Ha! Ha! You’ll be more confused in ten 
minutes. You’ll have lost your way as you 
never lost it before. You’re going to go round 
Bow Bazar section.” 

“And the Lord have mercy on my soul!” 
Calcutta, the darker portion of it, does not look 
an inviting place to dive into at night. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT 

“And since they cannot spend or use aright 
The little time here given them in trust, 

But lavish it in weary undelight 

Of foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust — 

They naturally claimeth to inherit 
The Everlasting Future — that their merit 
May have full scope. ... As surely is most 
just.” 

— The City of Dreadful Night. 

The difficulty is to prevent this account 
from growing steadily unwholesome. But 
one cannot rake through a big city without en- 
countering muck. 

The Police kept their word. In five short 
minutes, as they had prophesied, their charge 
was lost as he had never been lost before. 
“Where are we now?” “Somewhere off the 
Chitpore Road, but you wouldn’t understand 
if you were told. Follow now, and step pretty 
much where we step — there’s a good deal of 
filth hereabouts.” 

The thick greasy night shuts in everything. 
We have gone beyond the ancestral houses of 
215 


2l6 


CITY OF THE 


the Ghoses of the Boses, beyond the lamps, the 
smells, and the crowd of Chitpore Road, and 
have come to a great wilderness of packed 
houses — just such mysterious, conspiring tene- 
ments as Dickens would have loved. There is 
no breath of breeze here, and the air is per- 
ceptibly warmer. There is little regularity in 
the drift, and the utmost niggardliness in the 
spacing of what, for want of a better name, we 
must call the streets. If Calcutta keeps such 
luxuries as Commissioners of Sewers and Pav- 
ing, they die before they reach this place. The 
air is heavy with a faint, sour stench — the es- 
sence of long-neglected abominations — and it 
cannot escape from among the tall, three-sto- 
ried houses. “This, my dear sir, is a perfectly 
respectable quarter as quarters go. That house 
at the head of the alley, with the elaborate 
stucco-work round the top of the door, was 
built long ago by a celebrated midwife. Great 
people used to live here once. Now it’s the — 
Aha! Look out for that carriage.” A big 
mail-phaeton crashes out of the darkness and, 
recklessly driven, disappears. The wonder is 
how it ever got into this maze of narrow 
streets, where nobody seems to be moving, and 
where the dull throbbing of the city’s life only 
comes faintly and by snatches. “Now it’s the 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


217 


what?” “St. John’s Wood of Calcutta — for 
the rich Babus. That ‘fitton’ belonged to one 
of them.” “Well, it’s not much of a place to 
look at?” “Don’t judge by appearances. 
About here live the women who have beggared 
kings. We aren’t going to let you down into 
unadulterated vice all at once. You must see 
it first with the gilding on — and mind that 
rotten board.” 

Stand at the bottom of a lift and look up- 
ward. Then you will get both the size and the 
design of the tiny courtyard round which one 
of these big dark houses is built. The central 
square may be perhaps ten feet every way, but 
the balconies that run inside it overhang, and 
seem to cut away half the available space. To 
reach the square a man must go round many 
corners, down a covered-in way, and up and 
down two or three baffling and confused 
steps. There are no lamps to guide, and the 
janitors of the establishment seem to be com- 
pelled to sleep in the passages. The central 
square, the patio or whatever it must be called, 
reeks with the faint, sour smell which finds its 
way impartially into every room. “Now you 
will understand,” say the Police kindly, as 
their charge blunders, shin-first, into a well- 
dark winding staircase, “that these are not the 


2 18 


CITY OF THE 


sort of places to visit alone.” “Who wants to? 
Of all the disgusting, inaccessible dens — Holy 
Cupid, what’s this?” 

A glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of 
innumerable bangles, a rustle of much fine 
gauze, and the Dainty Iniquity stands re- 
vealed, blazing — literally blazing — with jew- 
elry from head to foot. Take one of the fair- 
est miniatures that the Delhi painters draw, 
and multiply it by ten ; throw in one of Angel- 
ica Kaufmann’s best portraits, and add any- 
thing that you can think of from Beckford to 
Lalla Rookh, and you will still fall short of the 
merits of that perfect face. For an instant, 
even the grim, professional gravity of the Po- 
lice is relaxed in the presence of the Dainty 
Iniquity with the gems, who so prettily invites 
every one to be seated, and proffers such re- 
freshments as she conceives the palates of the 
barbarians would prefer. Her Abigails are 
only one degree less gorgeous than she. Half 
a lakh, or fifty thousand pounds’ worth — it is 
easier to credit the latter statement than the 
former — are disposed upon her little body. 
Each hand carries five jeweled rings which are 
connected by golden chains to a great jeweled 
boss of gold in the centre of the back of the 
hand. Earrings weighted with emeralds and 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


219 


pearls, diamond nose-rings, and how' many 
other hundred articles make up the list of 
adornments. English furniture of a gorgeous 
and gimcrack kind, unlimited chandeliers and 
a collection of atrocious Continental prints — 
something, but not altogether, like the glazed 
plaques on bon-bon boxes — are scattered about 
the house, and on every landing — let us trust 
this is a mistake — lies, squats, or loafs a Ben- 
gali who can talk English with unholy fluency. 
The recurrence suggests — only suggests, mind 
— a grim possibility of the affectation of exces- 
sive virtue by day, tempered with the sort of 
unwholesome enjoyment after dusk — this loaf- 
ing and lobbying and chattering and smoking, 
and unless the bottles lie, tippling among the 
foul-tongued handmaidens of the Dainty Ini- 
quity. How many men follow this double, de- 
leterious sort of life? The Police are dis- 
creetly dumb. 

“Now don't go talking about ‘domiciliary 
visits’ just because this one happens to be a 
pretty woman. We’ve got to know these 
creatures. They make the rich man and the 
poor spend their money; and when a man 
can’t get money for ’em honestly, he comes 
under our notice. Now do you see? If there 
was any ‘domiciliary visit’ about it, the whole 


220 


CITY OF THE 


houseful would be hidden past our finding as 
soon as we turned up in the courtyard. We’re 
friends — to a certain extent.” And, indeed, it 
seemed no difficult thing to be friends to any 
extent with the Dainty Iniquity who was so 
surpassingly different from all that experience 
taught of the beauty of the East. Here was 
the face from which a man could write Lalla 
Rookhs by the dozen, and believe every word 
that he wrote. Hers was the beauty that 
Byron sang of when he wrote — 

“Remember, if you come here alone, the 
chances are that you’ll be clubbed, or stuck, or, 
anyhow, mobbed. You’ll understand that this 
part of the world is shut to Europeans — abso- 
lutely. Mind the steps, and follow on.” The 
vision dies out in the smells and gross dark- 
ness of the night, in evil, time-rotten brick- 
work, and another wilderness of shut-up 
houses, wherein it seems that people do con- 
tinually and feebly strum stringed instruments 
of a plaintive and wailsome nature. 

Follows, after another plunge into a passage 
of a courtyard, and up a staircase, the appar- 
ition of a Fat Vice, in whom is no sort of ro- 
mance, nor beauty, but unlimited coarse hu- 
mor. She too is studded with jewels, and her 
house is even finer than the house of the other, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


221 


and more infested with the extraordinary men 
who speak such good English and are so def- 
erential to the Police. The Fat Vice has been 
a great leader of fashion in her day, and 
stripped a zemindar Raja to his last acre — in- 
somuch that he ended in the House of Correc- 
tion for a theft committed for her sake. Na- 
tive opinion has it that she is a “monstrous 
well-preserved woman.” On this point, as on 
some others, the races will agree to differ. 

The scene changes suddenly as a slide in a 
magic lantern. Dainty Iniquity and Fat Vice 
slide away on a roll of streets and alleys, each 
more squalid than its predecessor. We are 
“somewhere at the back of the Machua Ba- 
zar,” well in the heart of the city. There are 
no houses here — nothing but acres and acres, 
it seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, any one 
of which would be a disgrace to a frontier vil- 
lage. The whole arrangement is a neatly con- 
trived germ and fire trap, reflecting great 
credit upon the Calcutta Municipality. 

“What happens when these pigsties catch 
fire?” “They’re built up again,” say the Po- 
lice, as though this were the natural order of 
things. “Land is immensely valuable here.” 
All the more reason, then, to turn several 
Hausmanns loose into the city, with instruc- 


222 


CITY OF THE 


tions to make barracks for the population that 
cannot find room in the huts and sleeps in the 
open ways, cherishing dogs and worse, much 
worse, in its unwashen bosom. “Here is a 
licensed coffee-shop. This is where your nau- 
kers go for amusement and to see nautches.” 
There is a huge chappar shed, ingeniously or- 
namented with insecure kerosene lamps, and 
crammed with gharri-zvans , khitmatgars, 
small storekeepers and the like. Never a sign 
of a European. Why? “Because if an Eng- 
lishman messed about here, he’d get into 
trouble. Men don’t come here unless they’re 
drunk or have lost their way.” The gharri- 
zvans — they have the privilege of voting, have 
they not ? — look peaceful enough as they squat 
on tables or crowd by the doors to watch the 
nautch that is going forward. Five pitiful 
draggle-tails are huddled together on a bench 
under one of the lamps, while the sixth is 
squirming and shrieking before the impassive 
crowd. She sings of love as understood by the 
Oriental — the love that dries the heart and 
consumes the liver. In this place, the words 
that would look so well on paper, have an evil 
and ghastly significance. The gharri-zvans 
stare or sup tumblers and cups of a filthy de- 
coction, and the kunchenee howls with re- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


223 


newed vigor in the presence of the Police. 
Where the Dainty Iniquity was hung with 
gold and gems, she is trapped with pewter and 
glass; and where there was heavy embroidery 
on the Fat Vice’s dress, defaced, stamped tin- 
sel faithfully reduplicates the pattern on the 
tawdry robes of the kunchenee. So you see, if 
one cares to moralize, they are sisters of the 
same class. 

Two or three men, blessed with uneasy con- 
sciences, have quietly slipped out of the coffee- 
shop into the mazes of the huts beyond. The 
Police laugh, and those nearest in the crowd 
laugh applausively, as in duty bound. Perhaps 
the rabbits grin uneasily when the ferret lands 
at the bottom of the burrow and begins to clear 
the warren. 

“The chandoo - shops shut up at six, so you’ll 
have to see opium-smoking before dark some 
day/* No, you won’t, though.” The detective 
nose sniffs, and the detective body makes for a 
half-opened door of a hut whence floats the 
fragrance of the black smoke. Those of the in- 
habitants who are able to stand promptly clear 
out — they have no love for the Police — and 
there remain only four men lying down and 
one standing up. This latter has a pet mon- 
goose coiled round his neck. He speaks Eng- 


224 


CITY OF THE 


lish fluently. Yes, he has no fear. It was a 
private smoking party and — “No business 
to-night — show how you smoke opium.” 
“Aha! You want to see. Very good, I show. 
Hiya! you” — he kicks a man on the floor — 
“show how opium-smoking.” The kickee 
grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. The 
mongoose, always keeping to the man’s neck, 
erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, 
and chatters in its owner’s ear. The lamp for 
the opium-pipe is the only one in the loom, 
and lights a scene as wild as anything in the 
witches’ revel ; the mongoose acting as the fa- 
miliar spirit. A voice from the ground says, 
in tones of infinite weariness: “You take 
aUnt, so” — a long, long pause, and another 
kick from the man possessed of the devil — the 
mongoose. “You take afini?” He takes a 
pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of a 
knitting-needle. “'And light afini” He 
plunges the pellet into the night-light, where 
it swells and fumes greasily. “And then you 
put it in your pipe.” The smoking pellet is 
jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bam- 
boo-stemmed pipe, and all speech ceases, ex- 
cept the unearthly noise of the mongoose. 
The man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, 
and when the smoking pellet has ceased to 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


225 


smoke will be half way to Nibhan. “Now you 
go,” says the man with the mongoose. “I am 
going smoke.” The hut door closes upon a 
red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, and 
the man with the mongoose sinking, sinking 
onto his knees his head bowed forward and 
the little hairy devil chattering on the nape of 
his neck. 

After this the fetid night air sems almost 
cool, for the hut is as hot as a furnace. “See 
the pukka chandu shops in full blast to-mor- 
row. Now for Colootollah. Come through 
the huts. There is no decoration about this 
vice.” 

The huts now gave place to houses very tall 
and spacious and very dark. But for the nar- 
rowness of the streets we might have stumbled 
upon Chouringhi in the dark. An hour and a 
half has passed, and up to this time we have 
not crossed our trail once. “You might knock 
about the city for a night and never cross the 
same line. Recollect Calcutta isn’t one of your 
poky up country cities of a lakh and a half of 
people.” “How long does it take to know it 
then?” “About a lifetime, and even then some 
of the streets puzzle you.” “How much has 
the head of a ward to know?” “Every house 
in his ward if he can, who owns it, what sort 


226 


CITY OF THE 


of character the inhabitants are, who are their 
friends, who go out and in, who loaf about 
the place at night, and so on and so on.” 
“And he knows all this by night as well as by 
day?” “Of course. Why shouldn’t he?” 
“No reason in the world. Only it’s pitchy 
black just now, and I’d like to see where this 
alley is going to end.” “Round the corner be- 
yond that dead wall. There’s a lamp there. 
Then you’ll be able to see.” A shadow flits 
out of a gully and disappears. “Who’s that?” 
“Sergeant of Police just to see where we’re go- 
ing in case of accidents.” Another shadow 
staggers into the darkness. “Who’s that?” 
“Man from the fort or a sailor from the ships. 
I couldn’t quite see.” The Police open a shut 
door in a high wall, and stumble unceremoni- 
ously among a gang of women cooking their 
food. The floor is of beaten earth, the steps 
that lead into the upper stories are unspeak- 
ably grimy, and the heat is the heat of April. 
The women rise hastily, and the light of the 
bull’s eye — for the Police have now lighted a 
lantern in regular “rounds of London” fash- 
ion — shows six bleared faces — one a half na- 
tive, half Chinese one, and the other Bengali. 
“There are no men here!” they cry. “The 
house is empty.” Then they grin and jabber 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


227 


and chew pan and spit, and hurry up the steps 
into the darkness. A range of three big rooms 
has been knocked into one here, and there is 
some sort of arrangment of mats. But an 
average country-bred is more sumptuously ac- 
commodated in an Englishman’s stable. A 
home horse would snort at the accommodation. 

“Nice sort of place, isn’t it?” say the Police, 
genially. “This is where the sailors get 
robbed and drunk.” “They must be blind 
drunk before they come,” “Na — Na! Na 
sailor men ee — yah!” chorus the women, 
catching at one word they understand. “Arl 
gone!” The Police take no notice, but tramp 
down the big room with the mat loose-boxes. 
A woman is shivering in one of these. 
“What’s the matter?” “Fever. Seek. Vary, 
vary seek.” She huddles herself into a heap 
on the charpoy and groans. 

A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the 
long room, and into this the Police plunge. 
“Hullo! What’s here?” Down flashes the 
lantern, and a white hand with black nails 
comes out of the gloom. Somebody is asleep 
or drunk in the cot. The ring of lantern light 
travels slowly up and down the body. “A 
sailor from the ships. He’s got his dungarees 
on. He’ll be robbed before the morning most 


228 


CITY OF THE 


likely.” The man is sleeping like a little child, 
both arms thrown over his head, and he is not 
unhandsome. He is shoeless, and there are 
huge holes in his stockings. He is a pure- 
blooded white, and carries the flush of inno- 
cent sleep on his cheeks. 

The light is turned off, and the Police de- 
part; while the woman in the loose-box 
shivers, and moans that she is “seek: vary, 
vary, seek.” It is not surprising. 


CHAPTER VII 


DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 


I built myself a lordly pleasure-house, 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell; 

I said : “0 Soul, make merry and carouse. 

Dear Soul — for all is well.” 

— The Palace of Art. 

“And where next? I don’t like Colootol- 
lah.” The Police and their charge are stand- 
ing in the interminable waste of houses under 
the starlight. “To the lowest sink of all,” say 
the Police after the manner of Virgil when he 
took the Italian with the indigestion to look 
at the frozen sinners. “And where’s that?” 
“Somewhere about here; but you wouldn’t 
know if you were told.” They lead and they 
lead and they lead, and they cease not from 
leading till they come to the last circle of the 
Inferno — a long, long, winding, quiet road. 
“There you are ; you can see for yourself.” 

But there is nothing to be seen. On one 
side are houses — gaunt and dark, naked and 
229 


230 


CITY OF THE 


devoid of furniture; on the other, low, mean 
stalls, lighted, and with shamelessly open 
doors, wherein women stand and lounge, and 
mutter and whisper one to another. There is 
a hush here, or at least the busy silence of an 
officer of counting-house in working hours. 
One look down the street is sufficient. Lead 
on, gentlemen of the Calcutta Police. Let us 
escape from the lines of open doors, the flaring 
lamps within, the glimpses of the tawdry toi- 
let-tables adorned with little plaster dogs, 
glass balls from Christmas-trees, and — for 
religion must not be despised though women 
be fallen — pictures of the saints and statuettes 
of the Virgin. The street is a long one, and 
other streets, full of the same pitiful wares, 
branch off from it. 

“Why are they so quiet? Why don’t they 
make a row and sing and shout, and so on?” 
“Why should they, poor devils?” say the Po- 
lice, and fall to telling tales of horror, of 
women decoyed into palkis and shot into this 
trap. Then other tales that shatter one’s be- 
lief in all things and folk of good repute. 
“How can you Police have faith in human- 
ity?” 

“That’s because you’re seeing it all in a 
lump for the first time, and it’s not nice that 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


231 


way. Makes a man jump rather, doesn’t it? 
But, recollect, you’ve asked for the worst 
places, and you can’t complain.” “Who’s com- 
plaining? Bring on your atrocities. Isn’t that 
a European woman at that door?” “Yes. 

Mrs. D , widow of a soldier, mother of 

seven children:” “Nine, if you please, and 

good-evening to you,” shrills Mrs. D , 

leaning against the door-post, her arms folded 
on her bosom. She is a rather pretty, slightly- 
made Eurasian, and whatever shame she may 
have owned she has long since cast behind her. 
A shapeless Burmo-native trot, with high 
cheek-bones and mouth like a shark, calls Mrs. 
D “Mem-Sahib.” The word jars un- 

speakably. Her life is a matter between her- 
self and her Maker, but in that she — the 
widow of a soldier of the Queen — has stooped 
to this common foulness in the face of the city, 
she has offended against the white race. The 
Police fail to fall in with this righteous indig- 
nation. More. They laugh at it out of the 
wealth of their unholy knowledge. “You’re 
from up-country, and of course you don’t un- 
derstand. There are any amount of that lot 
in the city.” Then the secret of the insolence 
of Calcutta is made plain. Small wonder the 
natives fail to respect the Sahib, seeing what 


232 


CITY OF THE 


they see and knowing what they know. In the 
good old days, the honorable the directors de- 
ported him or her who misbehaved grossly, 
and the white man preserved his izzat. He 
may have been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian 
on a large scale. He did not sink in the pres- 
ence of the people. The natives are quite 
right to take the wall of the Sahib who has 
been at great pains to prove that he is of the 
same flesh and blood. 

All this time Mrs. D stands on the 

threshold of her room and looks upon the men 
with unabashed eyes. If the spirit of that 
English soldier, who married her long ago by 
the forms of the English Church, be now flit- 
ting bat-wise above the roofs, how singularly 

pleased and proud it must be ! Mrs. D is 

a lady with a story. She is not averse to tell- 
ing it. “What was — ahem — the case in which 
you were — er — hmn — concerned, Mrs. 
D ?” “They said I’d poisoned my hus- 
band by putting something into his drinking 
water.” This is interesting. How much 
modesty has this creature ? Let us see. “And 
— ah — did you?” “ ’T wasn’t proved,” said 

Mrs. D with a laugh, a pleasant, lady-like 

laugh that does infinite credit to her education 
and upbringing. Worthy Mrs. D ! It 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


233 


would pay a novelist — a French one let us say 
— to pick you out of the stews and make you 
talk. 

The Police move forward, into a region of 

Mrs. D s. This is horrible; but they are 

used to it, and evidently consider indignation 
affectation. Everywhere are the empty houses, 
and the babling women in print gowns. The 
clocks in the city are close upon midnight, but 
the Police show no signs of stopping. They 
plunge hither and thither, like wreckers into 
the surf; and each plunge brings up a sample 
of misery, filth and woe. 

“Sheikh Babu was murdered just here," 
they say, pulling up in one of the most trou- 
blesome houses in the ward. It would never 
do to appear ignorant of the murder of Sheikh 
Babu. “I only wonder that more aren't 
killed." The houses with their breakneck 
staircases, their hundred corners, low roofs, 
hidden courtyards and winding passages, seem 
specially built for crime of every kind. A 
woman — Eurasian — rises to a sitting position 
on a board-charpoy and blinks sleepily at the 
Police. Then she throws herself down with a 
grunt. “What’s the matter with you?" “I 
live in Markiss Lane and" — this with intense 
gravity — “I’m so drunk." She has a rather 


234 


CITY OF THE 


striking gipsy-like face, but her language 
might be improved. 

“Come along,” say the Police, “we’ll head 
back to Bentinck Street, and put you on the 
road to the Great Eastern.” They walk long 
and steadily, and the talk falls on gambling 
hells. “You ought to see our men rush one of 
’em. They like the work — natives of course. 
When we’ve marked a hell down, we post men 
at the entrances and carry it. Sometimes the 
Chinese bite, but as a rule they fight fair. It’s 
a pity we hadn’t a hell to show you. Let’s go 
in here — there may be something forward.” 
“Here” appears to be in the heart of a Chinese 
quarter, for the pigtails — do they ever go to 
bed? — are scuttling about the streets. “Never 
go into a Chinese place alone,” say the Police, 
and swung open a postern gate in a strong, 
green door. Two Chinamen appear. 

“What are we going to see?” “Japanese 
gir — No, we aren’t, by Jove! Catch that 
Chinaman, quick ” The pigtail is trying to 
double back across a courtyard into an inner 
chamber; but a large hand on his shoulder 
spins him round and puts him in rear of the 
line of advancing Englishmen, who are, be it 
observed, making a fair amount of noise with 
their boots. A second door is thrown open, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


235 


and the visitors advance into a large, square 
room blazing with gas. Here thirteen pig- 
tails, deaf and blind to the outer world, are 
bending over a table. The captured Chinaman 
dodges uneasily in the rear of the procession. 
Five — ten — fifteen seconds pass, the English- 
men standing in the full light less than three 
paces from the absorbed gang who see noth- 
ing. Then burly Superintendent Lamb brings 
down his hand on his thigh with a crack like a 
pistol-shot and shouts: “How do, 701111?” Fol- 
lows a frantic rush of scared Celestials, almost 
tumbling over each other in their anxiety to 
get clear. Gudgeon before the rush of the 
pike are nothing to John Chinaman detected 
in the act of gambling. One pigtail scoops up 
a pile of copper money, another a china ware 
soup-bowl, and only a little mound of accusing 
cowries remains on the white matting that 
covers the table. In less than half a minute 
two facts are forcibly brought home to the 
visitor. First, that a pigtail is largely com- 
posed of silk, and rasps the palm of the hand 
as it slides through; and secondly, that the 
forearm of a Chinaman is surprisingly muscu- 
lar and well-developed. “What’s going to be 
done?” “Nothing. They’re only three of us, 
and all the ringleaders would get away. Look 


236 


CITY OF THE 


at the doors. We’ve got ’em safe any time we 
want to catch ’em, if this little visit doesn’t 
make ’em shift their quarters. Hi! John. 
No pidgin to-night. Show how you makee 
play. That fat youngster there is our in- 
former.” 

Half the pigtails have fled into the dark- 
ness, but the remainder, assured and trebly as- 
sured that the Police really mean “no pidgin,” 
return to the table and stand round while the 
croupier proceeds to manipulate the cowries, 
the little curved slip of bamboo and the soup- 
bowl. They never gamble, these innocents. 
They only come to look on, and smoke opium 
in the next room. Yet as the game progresses 
their eyes light up, and one by one they lose in 
to deposit their price on odd or even — the 
number of the cowries that are covered and 
left uncovered by the little soup-bowl. My- 
than is the name of the amusement, and, what- 
ever may be its demerits, it is clean. The Po- 
lice look on while their charge plays and loots 
a parchment-skinned horror — one of Swift’s 
Struldburgs, strayed from Laputa — of the 
enormous sum of two annas. The return of 
this wealth, doubled, sets the loser beating his 
forehead against the table from sheer grati- 
tude. 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


237 


“Most immoral game this. A man might 
drop five whole rupees, if he began playing at 
sun-down and kept it up all night. Don’t you 
ever play whist occasionally?” 

“Now, we didn’t bring you round to make 
fun of this department. A man can lose as 
much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, 
and if he loses all his money he steals to get 
more. A Chinaman is insane about gambling, 
and half his crime comes from it. It must be 
kept down.” “And the other business. Any 
sort of supervision there?” “No; so long as 
they keep outside the penal code. Ask Dr. 

about that. It’s outside our department. 

Here we are in Bentinck Street and you can be 
driven to the Great Eastern in a few minutes. 
Joss houses? Oh, yes. If you want more hor- 
rors, Superintendent Lamb will take you round 
with him to-morrow afternoon at five. Re- 
port yourself at the Bow Bazar Thanna at five 
minutes to. Good-night.” 

The Police depart, and in a few minutes the 
silent, well-ordered respectability of Old Coun- 
cil House Street, with the grim Free Kirk at 
the end of it, is reached. All good Calcutta 
has gone to bed, the last tram has passed, and 
the peace of the night is upon the world. 
Would it be wise and rational to climb the 


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CITY OF THE 


spire of that kirk, and shout after the fashion 
of the great Lion-slayer of Tarescon: “O true 
believers! Decency is a fraud and a sham. 
There is nothing clean or pure or wholesome 
under the stars, and we are all going to perdi- 
tion together. Amen!” On second thoughts 
it would not ; for the spire is slippery, the night 
it hot, and the Police have been specially care- 
ful to warn their charge that he must not be 
carried away by the sight of horrors that can- 
not be written or hinted at. 

“Good-morning,” says the Policeman, tramp- 
ing the pavement in front of the Great East- 
ern, and he nods his head pleasantly to show 
that he is the representative of Law and Peace 
and that the city of Calcutta is safe from it- 
self for the present, 


CHAPTER VIII 


CONCERNING LUCIA 

“Was a woman such a woman — cheeks so round and 
lips so red? 

On the neck the small head buoyant like the bell 
flower in its bed.” 

Time must be filled in somehow till five this 
afternoon, when Superintendent Lamb will re- 
veal more horrors. Why not, the trams aid- 
ing, go to the Old Park Street Cemetery? It 
is presumption, of course, because none other 
than the great Sir W. W. Hunter once went 
there, and wove from his visit certain fascinat- 
ing articles for the Englishman; the memory 
of which lingers even to this day, though they 
were written fully two years since. 

But the Great Sir W. W. went in his Legis- 
lative Consular brougham and never in an un- 
bridled tram-car which pulled up somewhere 
in the middle of Dhurrumtollah. “You want 
go Park Street ? No trams going Park Street. 
You get out here.” Calcutta tram conductors 
are not polite. Some day one of them will be 
239 


240 


CITY OF THE 


hurt. The car shuffles unsympathetically 
down the street, and the evicted is stranded in 
Dhurrumtollah, which may be the Hammer- 
smith Highway of Calcutta. Providence ar- 
ranged this mistake, and paved the way to a 
Great Discovery now published for the first 
time. Dhurrumtollah is full of the People of 
India, walking in family parties and groups 
and confidential couples. And the people of 
India are neither Hindu nor Mussulman — 
Jew, Ethiop, Gueber nor expatriated British. 
They are the Eurasians, and there are hun- 
dreds and hundreds of them in Dhurrumtollah 
now. There is Papa with a shiny black hat 
fit for a counsellor of the Queen, and Mamma, 
whose silken attire is tight upon her portly fig- 
ure, and The Brood made up of straw-hatted, 
olive-cheeked, sharp-eyed little boys, and leggy 
maidens wearing white, open-work stockings 
calculated to show dust. There are the young 
men who smoke bad cigars and carry them- 
selves lordily — such as have incomes. There 
are also the young women with the beautiful 
eyes and the wonderful dresses which always 
fit so badly across the shoulders. And they 
carry prayer-books or baskets, because they 
are either going to mass or the market. With- 
out doubt, these are the people of India. They 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


241 


were born in it, bred in it, and will die in it. 
The Englishman only comes to the country, 
and the natives of course were there from the 
first, but these people have been made here, 
and no one has done anything for them except 
talk and write about them. Yet they belong, 
some of them, to old and honorable families, 
hold “houses, messuages, and tenements” in 
Sealdah, and are rich, a few of them. They 
all look prosperous and contented, and they 
chatter eternally in that curious dialect that 
no one has yet reduced to print. Beyond what 
little they please to reveal now and again in 
the newspapers, we know nothing about their 
life which touches so intimately the white on 
the one hand and the black on the other. It 
must be interesting — more interesting than 
the colorless Anglo-Indian article; but who 
has treated of it? There was one novel once 
in which the second heroine was an Eurasi- 
enne. She was a strictly subordinate character, 
and came to a sad end. The poet of the race, 
Henry Derozio — he of whom Mr. Thomas 
Edwards wrote a history — was bitten with 
Keats and Scott and Shelley, and overlooked 
in his search for material things that lay near- 
est to him. All this mass of humanity in Dhur- 
rumtollah is unexploited and almost unknown. 


242 


CITY OF THE 


Wanted, therefore, a writer from among the 
Eurasians, who shall write so that men shall 
be pleased to read a story of Eurasian life; 
then outsiders will be interested in the People 
of India, and will admit that the race has pos- 
sibilities. 

A futile attempt to get to Park Street from 
Dhurrumtollah ends in the market — the Hogg 
Market men call it. Perhaps a knight of that 
name built it. It is not one-half as pretty as 
the Crawford Market, in Bombay, but . . . 

it appears to be the trysting-place of Young 
Calcutta. The natural inclination of youth is 
to lie abed late, and to let the seniors do all the 
hard work. Why, therefore, should Pyramus 
who has to be ruling account forms at ten, and 
Thisbe, who cannot be interested in the price 
of second quality beef, wander, in studiously 
correct raiment, round and about the stalls be- 
fore the sun is well clear of the earth? Pyra- 
mus carries a walking stick with imitation sil- 
ver straps upon it, and there are cloth tops to 
his boots; but his collar has been two days 
worn. Thisbe crowns her dark head with a 
blue velvet Tam-o’-Shanter; but one of her 
boots lacks a button, and there is a tear in the 
left-hand glove. Mamma, who despises 
gloves, is rapidly filling a shallow basket, that 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


243 


the coolie-boy carries, with vegetables, pota- 
toes, purple brinjals, and — Oh, Pryamus! Do 
you ever kiss Thisbe when Mamma is not 
near ? — garlic — yea, lusson of the bazar. 
Mamma is generous in her views on garlic. 
Pryamus comes round the corner of the stall 
looking for nobody in particular — not he — 
and is elaborately polite to Mamma. Some- 
how, he and Thisbe drift off together, and 
Mamma, very portly and very voluble, is left 
to chaffer and sort and select alone. In the 
name of the Sacred Unities do not, young peo- 
ple, retire to the meat-stalls to exchange con- 
fidences! Come up to this end, where the 
roses are arriving in great flat baskets, where 
the air is heavy with the fragrance of flowers, 
and the young buds and greenery are littering 
all the floor. They won’t — they prefer talking 
by the dead, unromantic muttons, where there 
are not so many buyers. How they babble! 
There must have been a quarrel to make up. 
Thisbe shakes the blue velvet Tam-o’-Shanter 
and says : “O yess !” scornfully. Pyramus an- 
swers : “No-a, no-a. Do-ant say thatt.” 
Mamma’s basket is full and she picks up 
Thisbe hastily. Pyramus departs. He never 
came here to do any marketing. He came to 
meet Thisbe, who in ten years will own a fig- 


244 


CITY OF THE 


ure very much like Mamma’s. May their ways 
be smooth before them, and after honest ser- 
vice of the Government, may Pyramus retire 
on Rs. 250 per mensen, into a nice little house 
somewhere in Monghyr or Chunar. 

From love by natural sequence to death. 
Where is the Park Street Cemetery? A hun- 
dred gharri-zmns leap from their boxes and 
invade the market, and after a short struggle 
one of them uncarts his capture in a burial- 
ground — a ghastly new place, close to a tram- 
way. This is not what is wanted. The living 
dead are here — the people whose names are 
not yet altogether perished and whose tomb- 
stones are tended. “Where are the old dead ?” 
“Nobody goes there,” says the gharri-wan. 
“It is up that road.” He points up a long and 
utterly deserted thoroughfare - , running be- 
tween high walls. This is the place, and the 
entrance to it, with its mallee waiting with one 
brown, battered rose, its grilled door and its 
professional notices, bears a hideous likeness 
to the entrance of Simla churchyard. But, 
once inside, the sightseer stands in the heart of 
utter desolation — all the more forlorn for be- 
ing swept up. Lower Park Street cuts a great 
graveyard in two. The guide-books will tell 
you when the place was opened and when it 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


245 


was closed. The eye is ready to swear that 
it is as old as Herculaneum and Pompeii. The 
tombs are small houses. It is as though we 
walked down the streets of a town, so tall are 
they and so closely do they stand — a town 
shriveled by fire, and scarred by frost and 
siege. They must have been afraid of their 
friends rising up before the due time that they 
weighted them with such cruel mounds of ma- 
sonry. Strong man, weak woman, or some- 
body’s “infant son aged fifteen months” — it is 
all the same. For each the squat obelisk, the 
defaced classic temple, the cellaret of chunam, 
or the candlestick of brickwork — the heavy 
slab, the rust-eaten railings, the whopper- 
jawed cherubs and the apoplectic angels. Men 
were rich in those days and could afford to put 
a hundred cubic feet of masonry into the grave 
of even so humble a person as “Jno. Clements, 
Captain of the Country Service, 1820.” 
When the “dearly beloved” had held rank an- 
swering to that of Commissioner, the efforts 
are still more sumptuous and the verse . . . 

Well, the following speaks for itself: 

“Soft on thy tomb shall fond Remembrance shed 
The warm yet unavailing tear, 

And purple flowers that deck the honored dead 
Shall strew the loved and honored bier.” 


246 


CITY OF THE 


Failure to comply with the contract does not, 
let us hope, entail to forfeiture of the earnest- 
money ; or the honored dead might be grieved. 
The slab is out of his tomb, and leans foolishly 
against it; the railings are rotted, and there 
are no more lasting ornaments than blisters 
and stains, which are the work of the weather, 
and not the result of the “warm yet unavail- 
ing tear.” The eyes that promised to shed 
them have been closed any time these seventy 
years. 

Let us go about and moralize cheaply on 
the tombstones, trailing the robe of pious re- 
flection up and down the pathways of the 
grave. Here is a big and stately tomb sacred 
to “Lucia,” who died in 1776 a. d., aged 23. 
Here also be verses which an irreverent thumb 
can bring to light. Thus they wrote, when 
their hearts were heavy in them, one hundred 
and sixteen years ago: 

“What needs the emblem, what the plaintive strain, 
What all the arts that sculpture e’er expressed, 

To tell the treasure that these walls contain? 

Let those declare it most who knew her best. 

“The tender pity she would oft display 

Shall be with interest at her shrine returned, 
Connubial love, connubial tears repay, 

And Lucia loved shall still be Lucia mourned. 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


247 


“Though closed the lips, though stopped the tuneful 
breath, 

The silent, clay-cold monitress shall teach — 

In all the alarming eloquence of death 

With double pathos to the heart shall preach. 

“Shall teach the virtuous maid, the faithful wife, 

If young and fair, that young and fair was she, 
Then close the useful lesson of her life, 

And tell them what she is, they soon must be.” 

That goes well, even after all these years, does 
it not ? and seems to bring Lucia very near, in 
spite of what the later generation is pleased to 
call the stiltedness of the old-time verse. 

Who will declare the merits of Lucia — dead 
in her spring before there was even a Hickey's 
Gazette to chronicle the amusements of Cal- 
cutta, and publish, with scurrilous asterisks, 
the liaisons of heads of departments? What 
pot-bellied East Indiaman brought the “virtu- 
ous maid” up the river, and did Lucia “make 
her bargain,” as the cant of those times went, 
on the first, second, or third day after arrival ? 
Or did she, with the others of the batch, give 
a spinsters’ ball as a last trial — following the 
custom of the country? No. She was a fair 
Kentish maiden, sent out, at a cost of five hun- 
dred pounds, English money, under the cap- 
tain’s charge, to wed the man of her choice, 


248 


CITY OF THE 


and he knew Clive well, had had dealings with 
Omichand, and talked to men who had lived 
through the terrible night in the Black Hole. 
He was a rich man, Lucia’s battered tomb 
proves it, and he gave Lucia all that her heart 
could wish. A green-painted boat to take the 
air in on the river of evenings. Coffree slave- 
boys who could play on the French horn, and 
even a very elegant, neat coach with a genteel 
rutlan roof ornamented with flowers very 
highly finished, ten best polished plate glasses, 
ornamented with a few elegant medallions en- 
riched with mother-o’-pearl, that she might 
take her drive on the course as befitted a fac- 
tor’s wife. All these things he gave her. And 
when the convoys came up the river, and the 
guns thundered, and the servants of the Hon- 
orable the East India Company drank to the 
king’s health, be sure that Lucia before all the 
other ladies in the fort had her choice of the 
new stuffs from England and was cordially 
hated in consequence. Tilly Kettle painted her 
picture a little before she died, and the hot- 
blooded young writers did duel with small- 
swords in the fort ditch for the honor of pilot- 
ing her through a minuet at the Calcutta thea- 
tre or the Punch House. But Warren Hast- 
ings danced with her instead, and the writers 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


249 


were confounded — every man of them. She 
was a toast far up the river. And she walked 
in the evening on the bastions of Fort-William, 
and said : “La ! I protest !” It was there that 
she exchanged congratulations with all her 
friends on the 20th of October, when those 
who were alive gathered together to felicitate 
themselves on having come through another 
hot season; and the men — even the sober fac- 
tor saw no wrong here — got most royally and 
Britishly drunk on Madeira that had twice 
rounded the Cape. But Lucia fell sick, and 
the doctor — he who went home after seven 
years with five lakhs and a half, and a corner 
of this vast graveyard to his account — said 
that it was a pukka or putrid fever, and the 
system required strengthening. So they fed 
Lucia on hot curries, and mulled wine worked 
up with spirits and fortified with spices, for 
nearly a week; at the end of which time she 
closed her eyes on the weary, weary river and 
the fort forever, and a gallant, with a turn for 
belles lettres , wept openly as men did then and 
had no shame of it, and composed the verses 
above set, and thought himself a neat hand at 
the pen — stap his vitals! But the factor was 
so grieved that he could write nothing at all — 
could only spend his money — and he counted 


250 


CITY OF THE 


his wealth by lakhs — on a sumptuous grave. 
A little later on he took comfort, and when 
the next batch came out — 

But this has nothing whatever to do with the 
story of Lucia, the virtuous maid, the faith- 
ful wife. Her ghost went to Mrs. Westland’s 
powder ball, and looked very beautiful. 


CHAPTER IX 


A RAILWAY SETTLEMENT 

Jamalpur is the headquarters of the E. I. 
Railway. This in itself is not a stai ding state- 
ment. The wonder begins with the exploration 
of Jamalpur, which is a station entirely made 
by, and devoted to, the use of those untiring 
servants of the public, the railway folk. They 
have towns of their own at Toondla and As- 
sensole, a sun-dried sanitarium at Bandikui; 
and Howrah, Ajmir, Allahabad, Lahore and 
Pindi know their colonies. But Jamalpur is 
unadulteratedly “Railway,” and he who has 
nothing to do with the E. I. Railway in some 
shape or another feels a stranger and an “in- 
terloper.” Running always east and southerly, 
the train carries him from the torments of the 
northwest into the wet, woolly warmth of Ben- 
gal, where may be found the hothouse heat 
that has ruined the temper of the good people 
of Calcutta. Here the land is fat and greasy 
with good living, and the wealth of the bodies 
of innumerable dead things; and here — just 
above Mokameh — may be seen fields stretch- 

251 


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CITY OF THE 


ing, without stick, stone or bush to break the 
view, from the railway line to the horizon. 

Up-country innocents must look at the map 
to learn that Jamalpur is near the top left-hand 
corner of the big loop that the E. I. R. throws 
out round Bhagalpur and part of the Bara- 
Banki districts. Northward of Jamalpur, as 
near as may be, lies the Ganges and Tirhoot, 
and eastward an offshoot of the volcanic 
Rajmehal range blocks the view. 

A station which has neither Judge, Commis- 
sioner, Deputy or ’Stunt, which is devoid of 
law courts, ticca-gharris, District Superin- 
tendents of Police, and many other evidences 
of an overcultured civilization, is a curiosity. 
“We administer ourselves,” says Jamalpur, 
proudly, “or we did — till we had lokal sluff 
brought in — and now the racket-marker admin- 
isters us.” This is a solemn fact. The station, 
which had its beginnings thirty odd years ago, 
used, till comparatively recent times, to control 
its own roads, sewage, conservancy, and the 
like. But, with the introduction of local self- 
government, it was ordained that the “inesti- 
mable boon” should be extended to a place 
made by, and maintained for, Europeans, and 
a brand new municipality was created and nom- 
inated according to the many rules of the game. 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


253 


In the skirmish that ensued, the club racket- 
marker fought his way to the front, secured a 
place on a board largely composed of Babus, 
and since that day Jamalpur’s views on “local 
sluff” have not been fit for publication. To 
understand the magnitude of the insult, one 
must study the city — for station, in the strict 
sense of the word, it is not. Crotons, palms, 
mangoes, mellingtonias , teak, and bamboos 
adorn it, and the poinsett a and bougainvillea. 
the railway creeper and the bignoniavenusta 
make it gay with many colors. It is laid out 
with military precision on the right-hand side 
of the line going down to Calcutta — to each 
house its just share of garden and green jilmil, 
its red surki path, its growth of trees, and its 
neat little wicket gate. Its general aspect, in 
spite of the Dutch formality, is that of an Eng- 
lish village, such a thing as enterprising stage- 
managers put on the theatres at home. The 
hills have thrown a protecting arm round 
nearly three sides of it, and on the fourth it is 
bounded by what are locally known as the 
“shed in other words, the station, offices, and 
workshops of the company. The E. I. R. only 
exists for outsiders. Its servants speak of it 
reverently, angrily, despitefully, or enthusias- 
tically as “The Company;” and they never omit 


254 


CITY OF THE 


the big, big C. Men must have treated the 
Honorable East India Company in something 
the same fashion ages ago. “The Company” 
in Jamalpur is Lord Dufferin, all the Members 
of Council, the Body-Guard, Sir Frederick 
Roberts, Mr. Westland, whose name is at the 
bottom of the currency notes, the Oriental Life 
Assurance Company, and the Bengal Govern- 
ment all rolled into one. At first, when a 
stranger enters this life, he is inclined to scoff 
and ask, in his ignorance: “What is this Com- 
pany that you talk so much about ?” Later on, 
he ceases to scoff, and his mouth opens slowly ; 
for the Company is a “big” thing — almost big 
enough to satisfy an American. 

Ere beginning to describe its doings, let it be 
written, and repeated several times hereafter, 
that the E. I. R. passenger carriages, and es- 
pecially the second-class, are just now — horrid, 
being filthy and unwashen, dirty to look at, and 
dirty to live in. Having cast this small stone, 
we will examine Jamalpur. When it was laid 
out, in or before the Mutiny year, its designers 
allowed room for growth, and made the houses 
of one general design — some of brick, some of 
stone, some three, four, and six-roomed, some 
single men’s barracks and some two-storied — 
all for the use of the employees. King’s Road, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


255 


Prince's Road, Queen’s Road, and Victoria 
Road — Jamalpur is loyal — cut the breadth of 
the station; and Albert Road, Church Street, 
and Steam Road the length of it. Neither on 
these roads nor on any of the cool-shaded 
smaller ones is anything unclean or unsightly to 
be found. There is a dreary bustee in the 
neighborhood which is said to make the most 
of any cholera that may be going, but Jamalpur 
itself is specklessly and spotlessly neat. From 
St. Mary’s Church to the railway station, and 
from the buildings where they print daily about 
half a lakh of tickets to the ringing, roaring, 
rattling workshops, everything has the air of 
having been cleaned up at ten that very morn- 
ing and put under a glass case. Also there is 
a holy calm about the roads — totally unlike any- 
thing in an English manufacturing town. 
Wheeled conveyances are few, because every 
man’s bungalow is close to his work, and when 
the day has begun and the offices of the “Loco.” 
and “Traffic” have soaked up their thousands 
of natives and hundreds of Europeans, you 
shall pass under the dappled shadows of the 
teak trees, hearing nothing louder than the 
croon of some bearer playing with a child in the 
veranda or the faint tinkle of a piano. This is 
pleasant, and produces an impression of 


256 


CITY OF THE 


Watteau-like refinement tempered with Ar- 
cadian simplicity. The dry, anguished howl of 
the “buzzer,” the big steam whistle, breaks the 
hush, and all Jamalpur is alive with the tramp- 
ing of tiffin-seeking feet. The Company gives 
one hour for meals between eleven and twelve. 
On the stroke of noon there is another rush 
back to the works or the offices, and Jamalpur 
sleeps through the afternoon till four or half- 
past, and then rouses for tennis at the institute. 

It is a quiet, restful place to live or die in, 
but not great for enterprise. Tropical or semi- 
tropical cities are never remarkable for exces- 
sive energy or activity. Nor do the inhabitants 
arrive at fortune made by the exertion of the 
persons possessing it. Fortunes are made in 
such places, but by the dull continuous labor of 
inferiors and natives for some supervisor or 
director, usually foreign. 

In the hot weather it splashes in the swim- 
ming bath, or reads, for it has a library of sev- 
eral thousand books. One of the most flourish- 
ing lodges in the Bengal jurisdiction — “St. 
George in the East” — lives at Jamalpur, and 
meets twice a month. Its members point out 
with justifiable pride that all the fittings were 
made by their own hands ; and the lodge in its 
accoutrements and the energy of the craftsmen 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


257 


can compare with any in India. But the insti- 
tute seems to be the central gathering place, and 
its half-dozen tennis-courts and neatly-laid-out 
grounds seem to be always full. Here, if a 
stranger could judge, the greater part of the 
flirtation of Jamalpur is carried out, and here 
the dashing apprentice — the apprentices are the 
liveliest of all — learns that there are problems 
harder than any he studies at the night school, 
and that the heart of a maiden is more in- 
scrutable than the mechanism of a locomotive. 
On Tuesdays and Fridays, as a printed notifi- 
cation witnesseth, the volunteers parade. A 
and B Companies, one hundred and fifty strong 
in all, of the E. I. R. Volunteers, are stationed 
here with the band. Their uniform, grey with 
red facings, is not lovely, but they know how 
to shoot and drill. They have to. The Com- 
pany makes it a condition of service that a 
man must be a volunteer; and volunteer in 
something more than name he must be, or some 
one will ask the reason why. Seeing that there 
are no regulars between Howrah and Dinapore, 
the Company does well in exacting this toll. 
Some of the old soldiers are wearied of drill, 
some of the youngsters don’t like it, but — the 
way they entrain and detrain is worth seeing. 
They are as mobile a corps as can be desired, 


258 


CITY OF THE 


and perhaps ten or twelve years hence the Gov- 
ernment may possibly be led to take a real in- 
terest in them and spend a few thousand rupees 
in providing them with real soldiers’ kits — not 
uniform and rifle merely. Their ranks include 
all sorts and conditions of men — heads of the 
“loco” and “traffic,” the Company is no great 
respecter of rank — clerks in the “audit,” boys 
from mercantile firms at home, fighting with 
the intricacies of time, fare and freight tables ; 
guards who have grown grey in the service of 
the Company; mail and passenger drivers with 
nerves of cast iron, who can shoot through a 
long afternoon without losing temper or flurry- 
ing; light-built East Indians; Tyne-side men, 
slow of speech and uncommonly strong in the 
arm ; lathy apprentices who have not yet “filled 
out;” fitters, turners, foremen, full assistant 
and sub-assistant station-masters, and a host of 
others. In the hands of the younger men the 
regulation Martini-Henry naturally goes off 
the line occasionally on a shikar expedition. 

There is a twelve-hundred yards’ range run- 
ning down one side of the station, and the con- 
dition of the grass by the firing butt tells its 
own tale. Scattered in the ranks of the volun- 
teers are a fair number of old soldiers, for the 
Company has a weakness for recruiting from 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


259 


the army for its guards, who may, in time, be- 
come station-masters. A good man from the 
army, with his papers all correct and certificates 
from his commanding officer, may, after de- 
positing twenty pounds to pay his home pas- 
sage, in the event of his services being dis- 
pensed with, enter the Company’s service on 
something less than one hundred rupees a 
month and rise in time to four hundred as a 
station-master. A railway bungalow — and 
they are as substantially built as the engines — 
cannot cost him more than one-ninth of the pay 
of his grade, and the Provident Fund provides 
for his latter end. 

Think for a moment of the number of men 
that a line running from Howrah to Delhi 
must use, and you will realize what an enor- 
mous amount of patronage the Company holds 
in its hands. Naturally a father who has 
worked for the line expects the line to do 
something for the son; and the line is not 
backward in meeting his wishes where pos- 
sible. The sons of old servants may be taken 
on at fifteen years of age, or thereabouts, as 
apprentices in the “shops,” receiving twenty 
rupees in the first and fifty in the last year of 
the indentures. Then they come on the books 
as full “men” on perhaps Rs. 65 a month, and 


26 o 


CITY OF THE 


the road is open to them in many ways. They 
may become foremen of departments on Rs. 
500 a month, or drivers earning with over- 
time Rs. 370; or if they have been brought 
into the audit or the traffic, they may control 
innumerable Babus and draw several hundreds 
of rupees monthly; or, at eighteen or nineteen, 
they may be ticket-collectors, working up to 
the grade of guard, etc. Every rank of the 
huge, human hive has a desire to see its sons 
placed properly, and the native workmen, 
about three thousand, in the locomotive de- 
partment only, are, said one man, “making a 
family affair of it altogether. You see all 
those men turning brass and looking after the 
machinery? They’ve all got relatives, and a 
lot of ’em own land out Monghyr-way close 
to us. They bring on their sons as soon as 
they are old enough to do anything, and the 
Company rather encourages it. You see the 
father is in a way responsible for his son, and 
he’ll teach him all he knows, and in that way 
the Company has a hold on them all. You’ve 
no notion how sharp a native is when he’s 
working on his own hook. All the district 
round here, right up to Monghyr, is more or 
less dependent on the railway.” 

The Babus in the traffic department, in the 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


261 


stores, issue department, in all the departments 
where men sit through the long, long Indian 
day among ledgers, and check and pencil and 
deal in figures and items and rupees, may be 
counted by hundreds. Imagine the struggle 
among them to locate their sons in comfortable 
cane-bottomed chairs, in front of a big pewter 
inkstand and stacks of paper ! The Babus 
make beautiful accountants, and if we could 
only see it, a merciful Providence has made 
the Babu for figures and detail. Without him 
on the Bengal side, the dividends of any com- 
pany would be eaten up by the expenses of 
English or country-bred clerks. The Babu is 
a great man, and, to respect him, you must see 
five score or so of him in a room a hundred 
yards long bending over ledgers, ledgers, and 
yet more ledgers — silent as the Sphinx and 
busy as a bee. He is the lubricant of the great 
machinery of the Company whose ways and 
works cannot be dealt with in a single scrawl. 


CHAPTER X 


THE MIGHTY SHOPS 

A study of this Republic of Jamalpur is not 
easy. The railway folk, like the army and 
civilian castes, have their own language and 
life, which an outsider cannot hope to under- 
stand. For instance, when Jamalpur refers 
to itself as being “on the long siding,” a 
lengthy explanation is necessary before the 
visitor grasps the fact that the whole of the 
two hundred and thirty odd miles of the loop 
from Luckeeserai to Kanu- Junction via Bhag- 
alpur is thus contemptuously treated. Jamal- 
pur insists that it is out of the world, and 
makes this an excuse for being proud of itself 
and all its institutions. But in one thing it 
is badly, disgracefully provided. At a mod- 
erate estimate there must be about two hun- 
dred Europeans with their families in this 
place. They can, and do, get their small sup- 
plies from Calcutta, but they are dependent 
on the tender mercies of the bazar for their 
meat, which seems to be hawked from door 
262 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


263 


to door. Also, there is a Raja who owns or 
has an interest in the land on which the station 
stands, and he is averse to cow-killing. For 
these reasons, Jamalpur is not too well sup- 
plied with good meat, and what it wants is a 
decent meat-market with cleanly controlled 
slaughtering arrangements. The Company, 
who gives grants to the schools and builds the 
institute and throws the shadow of its pro- 
tection all over the place, might help this 
scheme forward. 

The heart of Jamalpur is the “shops,” and 
here a visitor will see more things in an hour 
than he can understand in a year. Steam 
Street very appropriately leads to the forty or 
fifty acres that the “shops” cover, and to the 
busy silence of the loco, superintendent’s office, 
where a man must put down his name and his 
business on a slip of paper before he can pene- 
trate into the Temple of Vulcan. About three 
thousand five hundred men are in the “shops,” 
and, ten minutes after the day’s work has be- 
gun, the asistant superintendent knows exactly 
how many are “in” The heads of depart- 
ments — silent, heavy-handed men, captains of 
five hundred or more — have their names fairly 
printed on a board which is exactly like a pool- 
marker. They “star a life” when they come 


CITY OF THE 


.264 

in, and their few names alone represent sal- 
aries to the extent of six thousand a month. 
They are men worth hearing deferentially. 
They hail from Manchester and the Clyde, and 
the great ironworks of the North, and pleasant 
as cold water in a thirsty land is it to hear 
again the full Northumbrian burr or the long- 
drawn Yorkshire “aye.” Under their great 
gravity of demeanor — a man who is in charge 
of a few lakhs’ worth of plant cannot afford 
to be riotously mirthful — lurks melody and 
humor. They can sing like North-countrymen, 
and in their hours of ease go back to the speech 
of the iron countries they have left behind, 
when “Ab o’ th’ yate” and all “Ben Briarly’s” 
shrewd wit shakes the warm air of Bengal 
with deep-chested laughter. Hear “Ruglan’ 
Toon,” with a chorus as true as the fall of 
trip-hammers, and fancy that you are back 
again in the smoky, rattling, ringing North. 

But this is the “unofficial” side. Let us go 
forward through the gates under the mango 
trees, and set foot at once in sheds which have 
as little to do with mangoes as a locomotive 
with Lakshmi. The “buzzer” howls, for it is 
nearly tiffin time. There is a rush from every 
quarter of the shops, a cloud of flying natives, 
and a procession of more sedately pacing Eng- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


265 


lishmen, and in three short minutes you are 
left absolutely alone among arrested wheels 
and belts, pulleys, cranks, and cranes — in a 
silence only broken by the soft sigh of a far- 
away steam-valve or the cooing of pigeons. 
You are, by favor freely granted, at liberty to 
wander anywhere you please through the de- 
serted works. Walk into a huge, brick-built, 
tin-roofed stable, capable of holding twenty- 
four locomotives under treatment, and see 
what must be done to the Iron Horse once in 
every three years if he is to do his work well. 
On reflection, Iron Horse is wrong. An en- 
gine is a she — as distinctly feminine as a ship 
or a mine. Here stands the Echo, her wheels 
off, resting on blocks, her underside machinery 
taken out, and her side scrawled with mysteri- 
ous hieroglyphics in chalk. An enormous 
green-painted iron harness-rack bears her 
piston and eccentric rods, and a neatly-painted 
board shows that such and such Englishmen 
are the fitter, assistant and apprentice engaged 
in editing the Echo. An engine seen from 
the platform and an engine viewed from 
underneath are two very different things. The 
one is as unimpressive as a ticca-gharri; the 
other as imposing as a man-of-war in * the 
yard. 


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CITY OF THE 


In this manner is an engine treated for 
navicular-laminitis, backsinew, or whatever it 
is that engines most suffer from. No. 607, we 
will say, goes wrong at Dinapore, Assensole, 
Buxar, or wherever it may be, after three 
years’ work. The place she came from is 
stencilled on the boiler, and the foreman ex- 
amines her. Then he fills in a hospital sheet, 
which bears one hundred and eighty printed 
heads under which an engine can come into the 
shops. No. 607 needs repair in only one hun- 
dred and eighteen particulars, ranging from 
mud-hole flanges and blower-cocks to lead- 
plugs, and platform brackets which have 
shaken loose. This certificate the foreman 
signs, and it is framed near the engine for the 
benefit of the three European and the eight or 
nine natives who have to mend No. 607. To 
the ignorant the superhuman wisdom of the 
examiner seems only equalled by the audacity 
of the two men and the boy who are to under- 
take what is frivolously called the “job.” No 
607 is in a sorely mangled condition, but 403 
is much worse. She is reduced to a shell — 
is a very lean woman of an engine, bearing 
only her funnel, the iron frame and the saddle 
that supports the boiler. All the pretty little 
instruction primers say that an engine takes 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


267 


to pieces like a watch, but it is not good to see 
an engine so treated. Better had a man be- 
lieve that “they light the fire under the water, 
y’know, and that makes the water steam, and 
that gets into those piston things, and that 
drives the train.” 

Four-and-twenty engines in every stage of 
decomposition stand in one huge shop. A 
traveling crane runs overhead, and the men 
have hauled up one end of a bright vermilion 
loco. The effect is the silence of a scornful 
stare — just such a look as a colonel’s portly 
wife gives through her pince-nez at the au- 
dacious subaltern. Engines are the “liveliest” 
things that man ever made. They glare 
through their spectacle-plates, they tilt their 
noses contemptuously, and when their insides 
are gone they adorn themselves with red lead 
and leer like decayed beauties ; and in the Jam- 
alpur works there is no escape from them. The 
shops can hold fifty without pressure, and on 
occasion as many again. Everywhere there 
are engines, and everywhere brass domes lie 
about on the ground like huge helmets in a 
pantomime. The silence is the weirdest touch 
of all. Some sprightly soul — an apprentice be 
sure — has daubed in red lead on the end of an 
iron tool box a caricature of some friend who 


268 


CITY OF THE 


is evidently a riveter. The picture has all the 
interest of an Egyptian cartouche, for it shows 
that men have been here, and that the engines 
do not have it all their own way. 

And so, out in the open, away from the 
three great sheds between and under more en- 
gines, till we strike a wilderness of lines all 
converging to one turn-table. Here be ele- 
phant stalls ranged round a half-circle, and in 
each stall stands one engine, and each engine 
stares at the turn-table. A stolid and discon- 
certing company is this ring of eyed monsters ; 
324, 432, and 8 are shining like Bon Marche 
toys. They are ready for their turn of duty, 
and are as spruce as hansoms. Lacquered 
chocolate, picked out with black, red and white, 
is their dress, and delicate lemon graces the 
ceilings of the cabs. The driver should be a 
gentleman in evening dress with white kid 
gloves, and there should be gold-headed cham- 
pagne bottles in the spick and span tenders. 
Huckleberry Finn says of a timber raft: “It 
amounted to something being captain of that 
raft.” Thrice enviable is the man who, draw- 
ing Rs. 220 a month, is allowed to make Rs. 
150 overtime out of locos. Nos. 324, 432 or 8. 
Fifty yards beyond this gorgeous trinity are 
ten to twelve engines who have put in to 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


269 


Jamalpur to bait. They are alive, their fires 
are lighted, and they are swearing and purring 
and growling one at another as they stand 
alone — all alone. Here is evidently one of the 
newest type — No. 25, a giant who has just 
brought the mail in and waits to be cleaned up 
preparatory to going out afresh. 

The tiffin hour has ended. The buzzer 
blows, and with a roar, a rattle and a clang 
the shops take up their toil. The hubbub that 
followed on the prince’s kiss to the sleeping 
beauty was not so loud or sudden. Experi- 
ence, with a foot-rule in his pocket, authority 
in his port, and a merry twinkle in his eye, 
comes up and catches Ignorance walking gin- 
gerly round No. 25. “That’s one of the best 
we have,” says Experience, “a four-wheeled 
coupled bogie they call her. She’s by Dobbs. 
She’s done her hundred and fifty miles to-day; 
and she’ll run in to Rampur Haut this after- 
noon; then she’ll rest a day and be cleaned up. 
Roughly, she does her three hundred miles in 
the four-and-twenty hours. She’s a beauty. 
She’s out from home, but we can build our 
own engines — all except the wheels. We’re 
building ten locos, now, and we’ve got a dozen 
boilers ready if you care to look at them. 
How long does a loco, last? That’s just as 


270 


CITY OF THE 


may be. She will do as much as her driver 
lets her. Some men play the mischief with a 
loco, and some handle ’em properly. Our 
drivers prefer Hawthorne’s old four-wheel 
coupled engines because they give the least 
bother. There is one in that shed, and it’s a 
good ’un to travel. But 80,000 miles generally 
sees the gloss off an engine, and she goes into 
the shops to be overhauled and re-fitted and 
re-planed, and a lot of things that you wouldn’t 
understand if I told you about them. No. 1, 
the first loco, on the line, is running still, but 
very little of the original engine must be left 
by this time. That one there, called the Fawn, 
came out in the Mutiny year. She’s by 
Slaughter and Grunning, and she’s built for 
speed in front of a light load. French-looking 
sort of thing, isn’t she? That’s because her 
cylinders are on a tilt. We used her for the 
mail once, but the mail has grown heavier and 
heavier, and now we use six-wheel coupled 
eighteen inch, inside cylinder, 45-ton locos, to 
shift thousand-ton trains. No! All locos, 
aren’t alike. It isn’t merely pulling a lever. 
The company likes its drivers to know their 
locos., and a man will keep his Hawthorne for 
two or three years. The more mileage he gets 
out of her before she has to be overhauled the 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


271 


better man he is. It pays to let a man have 
his fancy engine. The Company knows that. 

Other lines don’t. There’s the . They 

run the life out of the men and the locos, to- 
gether. They’ll run an engine into the clean- 
ing shed wherever it may be, and then another 
driver jumps on and runs her back again, and 
so on till they’ve run the inside out of her. 
The drivers don’t care. ’Tisn’t their engine? 
The other man’s always said to have damaged 

her, and so the get their stock into a 

sweet state. ’Come in with a slide bar about 
red hot, and everything else to match. A man 
must take an interest in his loco., and that 
means she must belong to him. Some locos, 
won’t do anything, even if you coax and 
humor them. I don’t think there are any un- 
lucky ones now, but some years ago No. 31 
wasn’t popular. The drivers went sick or took 
leave when they were told off for her. She 
killed her driver on the Jubbulpore line, she 
left the rails at Kajra, she did something or 
other at Rampur Haunt, and Lord knows what 
she didn’t do or try to do in other places ! All 
the drivers fought shy of her, and in the end 
she disappeared. They said she was con- 
demned, but I shouldn’t wonder if the Com- 
pany changed her number quietly, and changed 


272 


CITY OF THE 


the luck at the same time. You see, the Gov- 
ernment Inspector comes and looks at our 
stock now and again, and when an engine’s 
condemned he puts his dhobi mark on her, and 
she’s broken up. Well, No. 31 was con- 
demned, but there was a whisper that they only 
shifted her number, and ran her out again. 
When the drivers didn’t know, there were no 
accidents. I don’t think we’ve got an unlucky 
one running now. Some are different from 
others, but there are no man-eaters. Yes, a 
driver of the mail is somebody. He can make 
Rs. 370 a month if he’s a covenanted man. 
We get a lot of our drivers in the country, and 
we don’t import from England as much as we 
did. Stands to reason that, now there’s more 
competition both among lines and in the labor 
market, the Company can’t afford to be as gen- 
erous as it used to be. It doesn’t trap a man 
though. It’s this way with the drivers. A 
native driver gets about Rs. 20 a month, and 
in his way he’s supposed to be good enough for 
branch work and shunting and such. Well, 
an English driver’ll get from Rs. 80 to Rs. 
220, and overtime. The English driver knows 
what the native gets, and in time they tell the 
driver that the native’ll improve. The driver 
has that to think of. You see? That’s com- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


273 


petition ! A driver, one day with another, does 
his hundred miles a day. Say a man leaves 
Buxar at 2 p. m. he gets to Allahabad at 
7 p. m. That’s 163 miles. He rests at Allaha- 
bad till 8 :20 next morning, when he goes back 
to Buxar, and rests till about 2 p. m. the next 
day. Then goes to Mokameh, reaches 
Mokameh at 7 p. m., stays till 4 next morning, 
and gets back to Buxar at 9:20 a. m. Then 
it all begins over again. He has got about 
three thousand pounds’ worth of the Com- 
pany’s property to look after under his own 
hand, and the Lord knows how much value 
in the train behind him. Oh, he’s got quite 
enough to think of when he’s on his engine.” 

Experience returns to the engine-sheds, now 
full of clamor, and enlarges on the beauties of 
sick locomotives. The fitters and the assist- 
ants and the apprentices are hammering and 
punching and gauging, and otherwise tech- 
nically disporting themselves round their enor- 
mous patients, and their language, as caught 
in snatches, is beautifully unintelligible. 

But one flying sentence goes straight to the 
heart. It is the cry of humanity over the task 
of life, done into unrefined English. An ap- 
prentice, grimed to his eyebrows, his cloth cap 
well on the back of his curly head and his 


274 


CITY OF THE 


hands deep in his pockets, is sitting on the edge 
of a toolbox ruefully regarding the very 
much disorganized engine whose slave is he. 
A handsome boy, this apprentice, and well 
made. He whistles softly between his teeth 
and his brow puckers. Then he addresses the 
engine, saying, half in expostulation and half 
in despair: “Oh, you condemned old female 
dog!” He puts the sentence more crisply — 
much more crisply — and Ignorance chuckles 
sympathetically. 

Ignorance also is puzzled over these engines. 


CHAPTER XI 


at the vulcan's forge 

In the wilderness of the railway shops — and 
machinery that planes and shaves, and bevels 
and stamps, and punches and hoists and nips 
— the first idea that occurs to an outsider, 
when he has seen the men who people the 
place, is that it must be the birthplace of inven- 
tions — a pasture-ground of fat patents. If a 
writing-man, who plays with shadows and 
dresses dolls that others may laugh at their 
antics, draws help and comfort and new 
methods of working old ideas from the stored 
shelves of a library, how, in the name of Com- 
monsense, his god, can a doing-man, whose 
mind is set upon things that snatch a few mo- 
ments from flying Time or put power into 
weak hands, refrain from going forward and 
adding new inventions to the hundreds among 
which he daily moves? 

Appealed to on this subject, Experience, 
who had served the E. I. R. loyally for many 
years, held his peace. “We don't go in much 


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CITY OF THE 


for patents; but,” he added, with a praise- 
worthy attempt to turn the conversation, 
“we can build you any mortal thing you like. 
We’ve got the Bradford Leslie for the Sahib- 
gunge ferry. Come and see the brass-work 
for her bows. It’s in the casting-shed.” 

It would have been cruel to have pressed 
Experience further, and Ignorance, to fore- 
date matters a little, went about to discover 
why Experience shied off this question, and 
why the men of Jamalpur had not each and 
all invented and patented something. He won 
his information in the end, but it did not come 
from Jamalpur. That must be clearly under- 
stood. It was found anywhere you please be- 
tween Howrah and Hoti Mardan; and here it 
is that all the world may admire a prudent and 
far-sighted Board of Directors. Once upon a 
time, as every one in the profession knows, 
two men invented the D. and O. sleeper — cast 
iron, of five pieces, very serviceable. The men 
were in the Company’s employ, and their mas- 
ters said: “Your brains are ours. Hand us 
over those sleepers.” Being of pay and posi- 
tion, D. and O. made some sort of resistance 
and got a royalty or a bonus. At any rate, 
the Company had to pay for its sleepers. But 
thereafter, and the condition exists to this day, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


277 


they caused it to be written in each servant’s 
covenant, that if by chance he invented aught, 
his invention was to belong to the Company. 
Providence has mercifully arranged that no 
man or syndicate of men can buy the “holy 
spirit of man” outright without suffering in 
some way or another just as much as the pur- 
chase. America fully, and Germany in part, 
recognizes this law. The E. I. Railway’s 
breach of it is thoroughly English. They say, 
or it is said of them, that they say: “We are 
afraid of our men, who belong to us waking 
and sleeping, wasting their time on trying to 
invent.” 

It is wholly impossible, then, for men of 
mechanical experience and large sympathies to 
check the mere patent-hunter and bring for- 
ward the man with an idea ? Is there no 
supervision in the “shops,” or have the men 
who play tennis and billiards at the institute 
not a minute which they can rightly call their 
very own? Would it ruin the richest Com- 
pany in India to lend their model shop and 
their lathes to half-a-dozen, or, for the matter 
of that, half-a-hundred, abortive experiments? 
A Massachusetts organ factory, a Racine 
buggy shop, an Oregon lumber yard would 
laugh at the notion. An American toy-maker 


278 


CITY OF THE 


might swindle an employee after the invention, 
but he would in his own interests help the man 
to “see what comes of the thing.” Surely a 
wealthy, a powerful and, as all Jamalpur bears 
witness, a considerate Company might cut that 
clause out of the covenant and await the issue. 
There would be quite enough jealousy between 
man and man, grade and grade, to keep down 
all the keenest souls; and with due respect to 
the steam-hammer and the rolling-mill we 
have not yet made machinery perfect. The 
“shops” are not likely to spawn unmanageable 
Stephensons or grasping Brunels; but in the 
minor turns of mechanical thought that find 
concrete expressions in links, axle-boxes, joint- 
packings, valves and spring-stirrups something 
might — something would — be done were the 
practical prohibition removed. Will a North- 
countryman give you anything but warm hos- 
pitality for nothing? Or if you claim from 
him overtime service as a right, will he fall 
to work zealously? “Onything but t’ brass,” 
is his motto, and his ideas are his “brass.” 

Gentlemen in authority, if this should meet 
your august eyes, spare it a minute’s thought, 
and, clearing away the floridity, get to the 
heart of the mistake and see if it cannot be 
rationally put right. Above all, remember that 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


279 


Jamalpur supplied no information. It was as 
mute as an oyster. There is no one within 
your jurisdiction to — ahem — “drop upon.” 

Let us, after this excursion into the offices, 
return to the shops and only ask Experience 
such questions as he can without disloyalty an- 
swer. 

“We used once,” says he, leading to the 
foundry, “to sell our old rails and import new 
ones. Even when we used ’em for roof beams 
and so on, we had more than we knew what 
to do with. Now we have got rolling-mills, 
and we use the rails to make tie-bars for the 
D. and O. sleepers and all sorts of things. We 
turn out five hundred D. and O. sleepers a 
day. Altogether, we use about seventy-five 
tons of our own iron a month here. Iron in 
Calcutta costs about five-eight a hundred- 
weight ; ours cost between three-four and 
three-eight, and on that item alone we save 
three thousand a month. Don’t ask me how 
many miles of rails we own. There are fifteen 
hundred miles of line, and you can make your 
own calculation. All those things like babies’ 
graves, down in that shed, are the moulds of 
the D. and O. sleepers. We test them by 
dropping three hundredweight and three hun- 
dred quarters of iron on top of them from a 


CITY OF THE 


280 

height of seven feet, or eleven sometimes. 
They don’t often smash. We have a notion 
here that our iron is as good as the home 
stuff.” 

A sleek, white and brindled pariah thrusts 
himself into the conversation. His home ap- 
pears to be on the warm ashes of the bolt- 
maker. This is a horrible machine, which 
chews red-hot iron bars and spits them out 
perfect bolts. Its manners are disgusting, and 
it gobbles over its food. 

“Hi, Jack!” says Experience, stroking the 
interloper, “you’ve been trying to break your 
leg again. That’s the dog of the works. At 
least he makes believe that the works belong 
to him. He’ll follow any one of us about the 
shops as far as the gate, but never a step fur- 
ther. You can see he’s in first-class condition. 
The boys give him his ticket, and, one of these 
days, he’ll try to get on to the Company’s 
books as a regular worker. He’s too clever to 
live.” Jack heads the procession as far as the 
walls of the rolling-shed and then returns to 
his machinery room. He waddles with fatness 
and despises strangers. 

“How would you like to be hot-potted 
there?” says Experience, who has read and 
who is enthusiastic over She, as he points to 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


281 

the great furnaces whence the slag is being 
dragged out by hooks. “Here is the old ma- 
terial going into the furnace in that big iron 
bucket. Look at the scraps of iron. There’s 
an old D. and O. sleeper, there’s a lot of clips 
from a cylinder, there’s a lot of snipped- up 
rails, there’s a driving-wheel block, there’s an 
old hook, and a sprinkling of boiler-plates and 
rivets.” 

The bucket is tipped into the furnace with 
a thunderous roar and the slag below pours 
forth more quickly. “An engine,” says Ex- 
perience, reflectively, “can run over herself, so 
to say. After she’s broken up she is made 
into sleepers for the line. You’ll see how 
she’s broken up later.” A few paces further 
on, semi-nude demons are capering over strips 
of glowing hot iron which are put into a mill 
as rails and emerge as thin, shapely tie-bars. 
The natives wear rough sandals and some pre- 
tence of aprons, but the greater part of them 
is “all face.” “As I said before,” says Ex- 
perience, “a native’s cuteness when he’s work- 
ing on ticket is something startling. Beyond 
occasionally hanging on to a red-hot bar too 
long and so letting their pincers be drawn 
through the mills, these men take precious 
good care not to go wrong. Our machinery is 


282 


CITY OF THE 


fenced and guard-railed as much as possible, 
and these men don’t get caught up by the belt- 
ing. In the first place, they’re careful — the 
father warns the son and so on — and in the 
second, there’s nothing about ’em for the belt- 
ing to catch on unless the man shoves his hand 
in. Oh, a native’s no fool! He knows that 
it doesn’t do to be foolish when he’s dealing 
with a crane or a driving-wheel. You’re look- 
ing at all those chopped rails? We make our 
iron as they blend baccy. We mix up all sorts 
to get the required quality. Those rails have 
just been chopped by this tobacco-cutter 
thing.” Experience bends down and sets a 
vicious-looking, parrot-headed beam to work. 
There is a quiver — a snap — and a dull smash 
and a heavy 76-pound rail is nipped in two like 
a stick of barley-sugar. 

Elsewhere, a bull-nosed hydraulic cutter is 
rail cutting as if it enjoyed the fun. In an- 
other shed stand the steam-hammers; the un- 
employed ones murmuring and muttering to 
themselves, as is the uncanny custom of all 
steam-souled machinery. Experience, with 
his hand on a long lever, makes one of the 
monsters perform : and though Ignorance 
knows that a man designed and men do con- 
tinually build steam hammers, the effect is as 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


283 


though Experience were maddening a chained 
beast. The massive block slides down the 
guides, only to pause hungrily an inch above 
the anvil, or restlessly throb through a foot 
and a half of space, each motion being con- 
trolled by an almost imperceptible handling of 
the levers. “When these things are newly 
overhauled, you can regulate your blow to 
within an eighth of an inch,” says Experience. 
“We had a foreman here once who could work 
’em beautifully. He had the touch. One day 
a visitor, no end of a swell in a tall, white hat, 
came round the works, and our foreman bor- 
rowed the hat and brought the hammer down 
just enough to press the knap and no more. 
‘How wonderful!’ said the visitor, putting his 
hand carelessly upon this lever rod here.” 
Experience suits the action to the word and 
the hammer thunders on the anvil. “Well you 
can guess for yourself. Next minute there 
wasn’t enough left of that tall, white hat to 
make a postage-stamp of. Steam-hammers 
aren’t things to play with. Now we’ll go over 
to the stores and see what happens to the old 
stock.” 

Experience leads the way to the Golgotha of 
Jamalpur. A great tripod, whence depends a 
pulley, chain, and hooks, hangs over a circular 


284 


CITY OF THE 


fence, strong as an elephant stockade. Inside 
the stockade is a pit some ten feet deep and 
twelve or fourteen in diameter. The logs that 
shore its sides are scarred and bruised and 
dented and splintered in horrible fashion : even 
the timbers of the stockade bear the marks of 
manglement, and at the bottom of the pit lie 
two enormous iron balls, each nearly a ton’s 
weight, and each bearing a handle. One look 
at the tripod and chain above and a rent cylin- 
der below explains everything. A row of 
hopelessly decayed engines and tenders are the 
“subjects” of this grim dissecting-room. 
“You see,” says Experience, “they hook on 
one of these balls to that chain, and haul it up 
by the winch in that fenced shed. Then they 
drop it on whatever is to be broken up, and — 
well, they dropped it upon that cylinder, and 
you can see for yourself what happened. 
Now, it has often struck me that Rider Hag- 
gard might use this place for a sort of variety 
entertainment, you know. No need to put a 
man in the pit. Just keep him inside the stock- 
ade when the ball fell, and let him dodge the 
splinters. A shell would be a joke to it. We 
break up old cannons here. There’s the breach 
of one of them, but some are so curious I’ve 
saved them and mounted ’em yonder. They 


DREADFUL NIGHT 285 

look neat on the red gravel by that fountain — 
don’t they?” 

Whatever apparent disorder there might 
have been in the works, the store department 
is as clean as a new pin, and stupefying in its 
naval order. Copper plates, bar, angle, and 
rod iron, duplicate cranks and slide bars, the 
piston rods of the Bradford Leslie steamer, 
engine grease, files and hammer-heads — every 
conceivable article, from leather laces of belt- 
ings to head-lamps, necessary for the due and 
proper working of a long line, is stocked, 
stacked, piled, and put away in appropriate 
compartments. In the midst of it all, neck 
deep in ledgers and indent forms, stands the 
many-handed Babu, the steam of the engine 
whose power extends from Howrah to Ghazia- 
bad. 

One small set of pigeon-holes contains the 
bulk of the daily correspondence. It is notice- 
able that “Sir Bradford Leslie” has a pigeon- 
hole all to himself. A surreptitious grab at 
one paper shows that a sergeant-instructor of 
volunteers, four hundred miles away, has had 
something done to his kitchen table. And this 
department knows all about it? Wah! Wah! 
One can only gape vacantly. The E. I. R. is a 
great chief. When it cracks its whip, we stand 


286 


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on our hind legs, and walk round the ring 
backward. Jamalpur does not say this, but 
that is the feeling in the air. 

The Company does everything, and knows 
everything . The gallant apprentice may be a 
wild youth with an earnest desire to go occa- 
sionally “upon the bend.” But three times a 
week, between 7 and 8 p. m., he must attend 
the night-school and sit at the feet of M. Bon- 
naud, who teaches him mechanics and statis- 
tics so thoroughly that even the awful Govern- 
ment Inspector is pleased. And when there is 
no night-school the Company will by no means 
wash its hands of its men out of working- 
hours. No man can be violently restrained 
from going to the bad if he insists upon it, but 
in the service of the Company a man has every 
warning ; his escapades are known, and a 
judiciously-arranged transfer sometimes keeps 
a good fellow clear of the down-grade. No 
one can flatter himself that in the multitude he 
is overlooked, or believe that between 4 p. m. 
and 9 a. m. he is at liberty to misdemean him- 
self. Sooner or later, but generally sooner, 
his goings-on are known, and he is reminded 
that “Britons never shall be slaves” — to things 
that destroy good work as well as souls. 
Maybe the Company acts only in its own in- 
terest, but the result is good. 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


287 


Best and prettiest of the many good and 
pretty things in Jamalpur is the institute of a 
Saturday when the Volunteer Band is playing 
and the tennis courts are full and the babydom 
of Jamalpur — fat, sturdy children — frolic 
round the bandstand. The people dance — but 
big as the institute is, it is getting too small 
for their dances — they act, they play billiards, 
they study their newspapers, they play cards 
and everything else, and they flirt in a sumpt- 
uous building, and in the hot weather the gal- 
lant apprentice ducks his friend in the big 
swimming-bath. Decidedly the railway folk 
make their lives pleasant. 

Let us go down southward to the big Giridih 
collieries and see the coal that feeds the furnace 
that smelts the iron that makes the sleeper that 
bears the loco, that pulls the carriage that holds 
the freight that comes from the country that is 
made richer by the Great Company Bahadur, 
the East Indian Railway. 


CHAPTER XII 


ON THE SURFACE 

Southward, always southward and east- 
erly, runs the Calcutta Mail from Luckeeserai, 
till she reaches Madapur in the Sonthal Par- 
ganas. From Madapur a train, largely made 
up of coal-trucks, heads westward into the 
Hazaribagh district and toward Giridih. A 
week would not have exhausted “Jamalpur and 
its environs,” as the guide-books say. But 
since time drives and man must e’en be driven, 
the weird, echoing bund in the hills above 
Jamalpur, where the owls hoot at night and 
hyenas come down to laugh over the grave of 
“Qullem Roberts, who died from the effects of 
an encounter with a tiger near this place, a. d. 
1864,” goes undescribed. Nor is it possible to 
deal with Monghyr, the headquarters of the 
district, where one sees for the first time the 
age of old Bengal in the sleepy, creepy station, 
built in a time-eaten fort, which runs out into 
the Ganges, and is full of quaint houses, with 
fat-legged balustrades on the roofs. Pensioners 
288 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


289 


certainly, and probably a score of ghosts, live 
in Monghyr. All the country seems haunted. 
Is there not at Pir Bahar a lonely house on a 
bluff, the grave of a young lady, who, thirty 
years ago, rode her horse down the khud and 
perished ? Has not Monghyr a haunted house 
in which tradition say skeptics have seen much 
more than they could account for? And is it 
not notorious throughout the countryside that 
the seven miles of road between Jamalpur and 
Monghyr are nightly paraded by tramping 
battalions of spectres, phantoms of an old-time 
army massacred, who but Sir W. W. Hunter 
knows how long ago ? The common voice at- 
tests all these things, and an eerie cemetery 
packed with blackened, lichened, candle-extin- 
guished tombstones persuades the listener to 
believe all that he hears. Bengal is second — 
or third is it? — in order of seniority among 
the Provinces, and like an old nurse, she tells 
many witch-tales. 

But ghosts have nothing to do with col- 
lieries, and that ever-present Company, the 
E. I. R., has more or less made Giridih — prin- 
cipally more. “Before the E. I. R. came,” 
say the people, “we had one meal a day. Now 
we have two.” Stomachs do not tell fibs, 
whatever mouths may say. That Company, 


290 


CITY OF THE 


in the course of business, throws about five 
lakhs a year into the Hazaribah district in the 
form of wages alone, and Giridih Bazar has 
to supply the wants of twelve thousand men, 
women and children. But we have now the 
authority of a number of high-souled and in- 
telligent native prints that the Sahib of all 
grades spends his time in “sucking the blood 
out of the country,” and “flying to England 
to spend his ill-gotten gains.” It is curious to 
watch a Sahib engaged in this operation. He 
— but no matter. His way shall be dealt with 
later on. 

Giridih is perfectly mad — quite insane ! 
Geologically, the big, thick books show that 
the country is in the metamorphic higher 
grounds that rise out of the alluvial flats of 
Lower Bengal between the Osri and the Bara- 
kar rivers. Translated, this sentence means 
that you can twist your ankle on pieces of pure 
white, pinky and yellowish granite, slip over 
weather-worn sandstone, grievously cut your 
boots over flakes of trap, and throw horn- 
blende pebbles at the dogs. Never was such a 
place for stone-throwing as Giridih. The gen- 
eral aspect of the country is falsely park-like, 
because it swells and sings in a score of grass- 
covered undulations, and is adorned with plan- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


291 


tation-like sal jungle. There are low hills on 
every side, and twelve miles away bearing 
south the blue bulk of the holy hills of Paras- 
nath, greatest of the Jain Tirthankars, over- 
looks the world. In Bengal they consider four 
thousand five hundred feet good enough for 
a Dagshai or Kasauli, and once upon a time 
tried to put troops on Parasnath. There was 
a scarcity of water, and Thomas of those days 
found the silence and seclusion prey upon his 
spirits. Since twenty years, therefore, Paras- 
nath has been abandoned by Her Majesty’s 
Army. 

As to Giridih itself, the last few miles of 
train bring up the reek of the “Black Coun- 
try.” Memory depends on smell. A noseless 
man is devoid of sentiment, just as a noseless 
woman, in this country, must be devoid of 
honor. That first breath of the coal should 
be the breath of the murky, clouded tract be- 
tween Yeadon and Dale — or Barnsley, rough 
and hospitable Barnsley — or Dewsbury and 
Batley and the Derby Canal, on a Sunday 
afternoon when the wheels are still and the 
young men and maidens walk stolidly in pairs. 
Unfortunately, it is nothing more than Giridih 
— seven thousand miles away from home and 
blessed with a warm and genial sunshine, soon 


292 


CITY OF THE 


to turn into something very much worse. The 
insanity of the place is visible at the station 
door. A G. B. T. cart once married a bathing- 
machine, and they called the child tum-tum. 
You who in flannel and Cawnpore harness 
drive bamboo-carts about up-country roads, 
remember that Giridih tum-tum is painfully 
pushed by four men, and must be entered 
crawling on all-fours, head first. So strange 
are the ways of Bengal. 

“They drive mad horses in Giridih — animals 
that become hysterical as soon as the dusk 
falls and the countryside blazes with the fires 
of the great coke ovens. If you expostulate 
tearfully, they produce another horse, a raw, 
red fiend whose ear has to be screwed round 
and round, and round and round, in a twitch 
before she will by any manner of means con- 
sent to start. Also, the roads carry neat little 
eighteen inch trenches at their sides, admir- 
ably adapted to hold the flying wheel. Skirl- 
ing about this savage land in the dark, the 
white population beguile the time by raptur- 
ously recounting past accidents, insisting 
throughout on the super-equine “steadiness ,, 
of their cattle. Deep and broad and wide is 
their jovial hospitality; but somebody — the 
Tirhoot planters for choice — ought to start a 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


293 


mission to teach the men of Giridih what to 
drive. They know how, or they would be sev- 
erally and separately and many times dead, but 
they do not, they do not indeed, know that 
animals who stand on one hind leg and beckon 
with all the rest, or try to pigstick in harness, 
are not trap-horses worthy of endearing 
names, but things to be pole-axed. Their feel- 
ings are hurt when you say this. “Sit tight,” 
say the men of Giridih; “we’re insured! We 
can’t be hurt.” 

And now with grey hairs, dry mouth, and 
chattering teeth to the colliers. The E. I. R. 
estate, bought or leased in perpetuity from the 
Serampore Raja, may be about four miles long 
and between one and two miles across. It is 
in two pieces, the Serampore field being sepa- 
rated from Karharbari (or Kurhurballi or 
Kabarbari) field by the property of the Ben- 
gal Coal Company. The Raneegunge Coal 
Association lies to the east of all other work- 
ings. So we have three companies at work on 
about eleven square miles of land. 

There is no such thing as getting a full view 
of the whole place. A short walk over a 
grassy down gives on to an outcrop of very 
dirty sandstone, which in the excessive inno- 
cence of their hearts most visitors will natur- 


294 


CITY OF THE 


ally take to be the coal lying neatly on the sur- 
face. Up to this sandstone the path seems to 
be made of crushed sugar, so white and shiny 
is the quartz. Over the brow of the down 
comes in sight the old familiar pit-head wheel, 
spinning for the dear life, and the eye loses it- 
self in a maze of pumping sheds, red-tiled, 
mud-walled miners’ huts, dotted all over the 
landscape and railway lines that seem to run 
on every kind of gradient. There are lines 
that dip into valleys and disappear round the 
shoulders of slopes, and lines that career on 
the tops of rises and disappear over the brow 
of the slopes. Along these lines whistle and 
pant metre-gauge engines, some with trucks at 
their tail and others rattling back to the pit- 
bank with the absurd air of a boy late for 
school that an unemployed engine always as- 
sumes. There are six engines in all, and as it 
is easiest to walk along the lines one sees a 
good deal of them. They bear not altogether 
unfamiliar names. Here, for instance, passes 
the “Cockburn” whistling down a grade with 
thirty tons of coal at her heels; while the 
“Whitly” and the “Olpherts” are waiting for 
their complements of truck. Now a Mr. T. 
F. Cockburn was superintendent of these 
mines nearly thirty years ago, in the days be- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


295 


fore the chord lines from Kanu to Luckeeserai 
was built, and all the coal was carted to the 
latter place: and surely Mr. Olpherts was an 
engineer who helped to think out a new 
sleeper. What may these things mean? 

“Apotheosis of the manager,” is the reply. 
“Christen the engines after the managers. 
You’ll find Cockburn, Dunn, Whitly, Abbott, 
Olpherts and Saise knocking about the place. 
Sounds funny, doesn’t it? Doesn’t sound so 
funny, when one of these idiots does his best 
to derail Saise, though, by putting a line down 
anyhow. Look at that line ! Laid out in knots 
— by Jove!” To the unprofessional eye the 
rails seem all correct ; but there must be some- 
thing wrong, because “one of those idiots” is 
asked why in the name of all he considers sa- 
cred he does not ram the ballast properly. 

“What would happen if you threw an en- 
gine off the line ?” “Can’t say that I know ex- 
actly. You see, our business is to keep them 
on, and we do that. Here’s rather a curiosity. 
You see that pointsman ! They say he’s an old 
mutineer, and when he relaxes he boasts of the 
Sahibs he has killed. He’s glad enough to eat 
the Company’s salt now.” Such a withered 
old face was the face of the pointsman at No. 
1 1 point ! The information suggested a host 


296 


CITY OF THE 


of questions, and the answers were these: 
‘‘You won’t be able to understand till you’ve 
been down into a mine. We work our men in 
two ways: some by direct payment — sirkari — 
under our own hand, and some by contractors. 
The contractor undertakes to deliver us the 
coal, supplying his own men, tools and props. 
He’s responsible for the safety of his men, and 
of course the Company knows and sees his 
work. Just fancy, among these five thousand 
people, what sort of effect the khuber of an ac- 
cident would produce ! It would go all 
through the Sonthal Parganas. We have any 
amount of Sonthal besides Mahomedans and 
Hindus of every possible caste, down to those 
Musahers who eat pig. They don’t require 
much administering in the civilian sense of the 
word. On Sundays, as a rule, if any man has 
had his daughter eloped with, or anything of 
that kind, he generally comes up to the man- 
ager’s bungalow to get the matter put straight. 
If a man is disabled through accident he 
knows that as long as he’s in the hospital he 
gets full wages, and the Company pays for 
the food of any of his women-folk who come 
to look after him. One of course: not the 
whole clan. That makes our service popular 
with the people — poor beggars. Don’t you be- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


297 


lieve that a native is a fool. You can train 
him to everything except responsibility. 
There’s a rule in the workings that if there is 
any dangerous work, no — we haven’t choke 
damps, I will show you when we get down — 
no gang must work without an Englishman to 
look after them. A native wouldn’t be wise 
enough to understand what the danger was, 
or where it came in. Even if he did, he’d shirk 
the responsibility. We can’t afford to risk a 
single life. All our output is just as much as 
the Company want — about a thousand tons per 
working day. Three hundred thousand in the 
year. We could turn out more? Yes — a little. 
Well, yes, twice as much. I won’t go on, be- 
cause you wouldn’t believe me. There’s the 
coal under us, and we work it at any depth 
from following up an outcrop down to six 
hundred feet. That is our deepest shaft. We 
have no necessity to go deeper. At home the 
mines are sometimes fifteen hundred feet 
down. Well, the thickness of this coal here 
varies from anything you please to anything 
you please. There’s enough of it to last your 
time and one or two hundred years longer. 
Perhaps even longer than that. Look at that 
stuff. That’s big coal from the pit.” 

It was aristocratic-looking coal, just like 


298 


CITY OF THE 


the picked lumps that are stacked in baskets 
of coal agencies at home with the printed leg- 
end atop “only 23^ a ton.” But there was no 
picking in this case. The great piled banks 
were all “equal to samples,” and beyond them 
lay piles of small, broken, “smithy” coal. 
“The Company doesn’t sell to the public. This 
small, broken coal is an exception. That is 
sold, but the big stuff is for the engines and the 
shops. It doesn’t cost much to get out, as you 
say; but our men can earn as much as twelve 
rupees a month. Very often when they’ve 
earned enough to go on with they retire from 
the concern till they’ve spent their money and 
then come on again. It’s piecework and they 
are improvident. If some of them only lived 
like other natives they would have enough to 
buy land and cows with. When there’s a 
press of work they make a good deal by over- 
time, but they don’t seem to keep it. You 
should see Giridih Bazar on a Sunday if you 
want to know where the money goes. About 
ten thousand rupees change hands once a week 
there. If you want to get at the number of 
people who are indirectly dependent or profit 
by the E. I. R. you’ll have to conduct a census 
of your own. After Sunday is over the men 
generally lie off on Monday and take it easy 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


299 


on Tuesday. Then they work hard for the 
next four days and make it up. Of course 
there’s nothing in the wide world to prevent a 
man from resigning and going away to wher- 
ever he came from — behind those hills if he’s 
a Sonthal. He loses his employment, that’s 
all. And they have their own point of honor. 
A man hates to be told by his friends that he 
has been guilty of nimakharami. And now 
we’ll go to breakfast. You shall be 'pitted’ 
to-morrow to any depth you like.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


IN THE DEPTHS 

“Pitted to any extent you please.” The 
only difficulty was for Joseph to choose his pit. 
Giridih was full of them. There was an arch 
in the side of a little hill, a blackened brick 
arch leading into thick night. A stationary 
engine was hauling a procession of coal-laden 
trucks — “tubs” is the technical word — out of 
its depths. The tubs w T ere neither pretty nor 
clean. “We are going down in those when 
they are emptied. Put on your helmet, and 
keep it on and keep your head down.” The 
trucks were unloaded into the wagons of the 
metre-gauge colliery line in this wise. Drawn 
out by the engine along the line, they were 
pulled on to a platform of smooth iron, dex- 
terously swung round by black demons in at- 
tendance, and slid on to what is technically 
termed a “tippler.” This is a most crafty ar- 
rangement, partaking of the nature of a drop 
and a safety-stirrup. The tub goes forward 
until it is brought up by the curved ends of 

3 °° 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


3 01 


the metals it travels on, and sticks in a sort of 
gigantic stirrup. Then, gravely and solemnly, 
it overbalances itself, turns through half a cir- 
cle, and shoots its load into the big truck be- 
low. Some of the “tipplers” are fixed on trav- 
eling platforms and can be moved down the 
whole length of a waiting coal-train. The 
Ratel — is it not? — is the eccentric beast in the 
Zoo who runs round his cage and turns head- 
over-heels at a given place. These absurd 
tubs are Ratels, and the gravity of their self- 
arranged somersaults is very comic. 

But there is nothing mirth-provoking in go- 
ing down a coal-mine — even though it be only 
a shallow incline running to one hundred and 
forty feet vertical below the earth. “Get into 
the tub and lie down. Hang it, no! This is 
not a railway carriage : you can’t see the coun- 
try out of the windows. Lie down in the dust 
and don’t lift your head. Let her go !” 

The tubs strain on the wire rope and slide 
down fourteen hundred feet of incline, at first 
through a chastened gloom, and then through 
darkness. An absurd sentence from a trial re- 
port rings in the head : “About this time pris- 
oner expressed a desire for the consolations of 
religion.” A hand with a reeking flare-lamp 
hangs over the edge of the tub, and there is a 


302 


CITY OF THE 


glimpse of a blackened solah topee near it, for 
those accustomed to the. pits have a merry trick 
of going down sitting or crouching on the 
coupling of the rear tub. The noise is deafen- 
ing, and the roof is very close indeed. The 
tubs bump, and the occupant crouches lovingly 
in the coal dust. What would happen if the 
train went off the line? The desire for the 
“consolations of religion” grows keener and 
keener as the air grows closer and closer. The 
tubs stop in darkness spangled, not lifted, by 
the light of the flare-lamps which many black- 
devils carry. Underneath and on both sides 
there is the greasy blackness of the coal, and, 
above, a roof of grey sandstone, smooth as 
the flow of a river at evening. “Now, remem- 
ber that if you don’t keep your topee on, you’ll 
get your head broken, because you will forget 
to stoop. If you hear any tubs coming up 
behind you step off to one side. There’s a 
tramway under your feet, and be careful not to 
trip over it.” 

The miner has a gait as peculiarly his own 
as Tommy’s measured paces or the blue- 
jacket’s roll. Big men who slouch in the light 
of day become almost things of beauty under 
ground. Their foot is on their native heather ; 
and the slouch is a very necessary act of horn- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


303 


age to the great earth, which if a man observe 
not, he shall without doubt have his solah topee 
— bless the man who invented pith hats! — 
grievously cut and dented, and himself dow- 
ered with an aching head. 

The road turns and winds and the roof be- 
comes lower, but those accursed tubs still rat- 
tle by on the tramways. The roof throws 
back their noises, and when all the place is full 
of a grumbling and a growling, how under 
earth is one to know whence danger will turn 
up next ? Also, the air is choking, and brings 
about, to the unacclimatized, a singing in the 
ears, a hotness of the eyeballs, and a jumping 
of the heart. “That’s because the pressure 
here is different from the pressure up above. 
It’ll wear off in a minute. We don’t notice it. 
Wait till you get down a four-hundred-foot 
pit. Then your ears will begin to sing, if you 
like.” Most people know the One Night of 
each hot weather — that still, clouded night 
just before the rain breaks, when there seems 
to be no more breathable air under the bowl of 
the pitiless skies, and all the weight of the si- 
lent, dark house lies on the chest of the sleep- 
hunter. This is the feeling in a coal-mine — 
only more so — much more so, for the darkness 
is the “gross darkness of the inner sepulchre.” 


304 


CITY OF THE 


It is hard to see which is the black coal and 
which the passage driven through it. From 
far away, down the side galleries, comes the 
regular beat of the pick — thick and muffled as 
the beat of the laboring heart. “Six men to 
a gang, and they aren’t allowed to work 
alone. They make six-foot drives through the 
coal — two and sometimes three men working 
together. The rest clear away the stuff and 
load it into the tubs. We have no props in this 
gallery because we have a roof as good as a 
ceiling. The coal lies under the sandstone 
here. It’s beautiful sandstone.” It was beau- 
tiful sandstone — as hard as a billiard table 
and devoid of any nasty little bumps and jags 
which cut into the hat. 

There was a roaring down one road — the 
roaring of infernal fires. This is not a pleas- 
ant thing to hear in the dark. It is too sugges- 
tive. “That’s our ventilating shaft. Can’t 
you feel the air getting brisker? Come and 
look.” 

Imagine a great iron-bound crate of burn- 
ing coal, hanging over a gulf of darkness 
faintly showing the brickwork of the base of a 
chimney. “We’re at the bottom of the shaft. 
That fire makes a draught that sucks up the 
foul air from the bottom of the pit. There’s 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


305 


another downdraw shaft in another part of the 
mine where the clean air comes in. We aren’t 
going to set the mines on fire. There’s an 
earth and kutcha brick floor at the bottom of 
the pit; the crate hangs over. It isn’t so deep 
as you think.” Then a devil — a naked devil — 
came in with a pitchfork and fed the spouting 
flames. This was perfectly in keeping with 
the landscape, but it was not pretty. "That’s 
only a little shaft. We’ve got one, an oval, 
eighteen feet by twelve, and four hundred and 
fifty feet deep. They aren’t sunk like wells. 
Our sandstones are stronger than any bricks. 
We brick through the twenty feet of surface 
soil, but we can sink straight through the 
sandstone, knowing that the sinkings will 
stand. Now we’ll go to the place where they 
are taking out the coal.” 

More trucks, more muffled noises, more 
darkness made visible, and more devils — male 
and female — coming out of darkness and van- 
ishing. Then a picture to be remembered. A 
great Hall of Eblis, twenty feet from inky- 
black floor to grey roof, upheld by huge pil- 
lars of shining coal and filled with flitting and 
passing devils. On a shattered pillar near the 
roof stood a naked man, his flesh olive-colored 
in the light of the lamps, hewing down a mass 


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of coal that still clove to the roof. Behind him 
was the wall of darkness, and when the lamps 
shifted he disappeared like a ghost. The 
devils were shouting directions, and the man 
howled in reply, resting on his pick and wiping 
the sweat from his brow. When he smote the 
coal crushed and slid and rumbled from the 
darkness into the darkness, and the devils cried 
shabash! The man stood erect like a bronze 
statue, he twisted and bent himself like a Japa- 
nese grotesque, and anon threw himself on his 
side after the manner of the dying gladiator. 
Then spoke the still small voice of fact: “A 
first-class workman if he would only stick to 
it. But as soon as he makes a little money he 
lies off and spends it. That’s the last of a pil- 
lar that we’ve knocked out. See here. These 
pillars of coal are square, about thirty feet each 
way. As you can see, we make the pillar first 
by cutting out all the coal between. Then we 
drive a square tunnel, about seven feet wide, 
through and across the pillar, propping it with 
baulks. There’s one fresh cut.” 

Two tunnels crossing at right angles had 
been driven through a pillar which in its un- 
der-cut condition seemed like the rough draft 
of a statue for an elephant. “When the pillar 
stands only on four legs we chip away one leg 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


307 


at a time from a square to an hour-glass shape, 
and then either the whole of the pillar crashes 
down from the roof or else a quarter or a half. 
If the coal lies against the sandstones it carries 
away clear, but in some places it brings down 
stone and rubbish with it. The chipped-away 
legs of the pillars are called stooks.” “Who 
has to make the last cut that breaks a leg 
through?” “Oh! Englishmen of all sorts. 
We can’t trust natives for the job unless it’s 
very easy. The natives take kindly to the pil- 
lar work though. They are paid just as much 
for their coal as though they had hewed it out 
of the solid. Of course we take very good 
care to see that the roof doesn’t come in on 
us. You would never understand how and why 
we prop our roofs with those piles of sleepers. 
Anyway, you can see that we cannot take out 
a whole line of pillars. We work ’em en ech- 
elon , and those big beams you see running 
from floor to roof are our indicators. They 
show when the roof is going to give. Oh! 
dear no, there’s no dramatic effect about it. 
No splash, you know. Our roofs give plenty 
of warning by cracking and then baito slowly. 
The parts of the work that we have cleared 
out and allowed to fall in are called goafs’. 
You’re on the edge of a goaf’ now. All that 


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darkness there marks the limit of the mine. 
We have worked that out piece-meal, and the 
props are gone and the place is down. The 
roof of any pillar-working is tested every 
morning by tapping — pretty hard tapping.” 

“Hi yi! yi!” shout all the devils in chorus, 
and the Hall of Eblis is full of rolling sound. 
The olive man has brought down an avalanche 
of coal. “It is a sight to see the whole of one 
of the pillars come away. They make an aw- 
ful noise. It would startle you out of your 
wits. Some of ’em are ninety feet square. 
But there’s not an atom of risk.” 

(“Not an atom of risk.” Oh, genial and 
courteous host, when you turned up next day 
blacker than any sweep that ever swept, with 
a neat, half-inch gash on your forehead — won 
by cutting a “stook” and getting caught by a 
bounding coal-knob — how long and earnestly 
did you endeavor to show that “stook-cutting” 
was an employment as harmless and unexcit- 
ing as wool-samplering?) 

“If you knew about mining, you’d see that 
our ways are rather primitive, but they’re 
cheap, and they’re safe as houses. Dorns and 
Bauris, Kols and Beldars don’t understand re- 
finements in mining. They’d startle an Eng- 
lish pit where there was fire-damp. Do you 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


309 


know it’s a solemn fact that if you drop a 
Davy lamp or snatch it quickly you can blow 
a whole English pit inside out with all the 
miners? Good for us that we don’t know 
what fire-damp is here. We can use the flare- 
lamps.” 

After the first feeling of awe and wonder is 
worn out, a mine becomes monotonous. How 
could a mine be anything but monotonous? 
Mile after mile of blackness stretching before 
the eyes as far as sight will carry, which is 
not saying much, even when one has been 
some time accustomed to the lack of light. 
There is only the humming, palpitating dark- 
ness, the rumble of the tubs and the endless 
procession of galleries to arrest the attention. 
And one pit to the uninitiated is as like to an- 
other as two peas. Tell a miner this and he 
laughs — slowly and softly. To him the pits 
have each distinct personalities, and each must 
be dealt with a different way. A descent from 
the pit-bank, and not from the mouth of an 
incline, is sickening — chanel-passage sicken- 
ing. Over pulley-wheels, mounted on shear- 
legs, thirty, forty, or fifty feet high, passes the 
wire rope that is fastened to the “cages” — the 
two lifts on which the empty coal tubs go 
down and the loaded ones come up. A cage 


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CITY OF THE 


either has wooden guides at the four corners 
of the shaft or grips wire guide-ropes to 
steady it as it is let down. An engine drives 
the drum on which the wire-rope hauling line 
is coiled. 

Very curious is a pit-bank when the work is 
in full swing. A hammer close to the winding 
engine strikes one, the driver places his foot 
on the lever: there is a roar far down the 
shaft, and an iron-railed platform with the 
loaded tub on it flies up and settles with a clang 
on four catches. The tub is run out into a 
“tippler” and discharges itself into a coal- 
truck. By the time it is run back empty into 
the second cage, a loaded truck is made ready 
at the bottom of the shaft, and as the empty 
truck sinks the full rises. 

The hammer strikes three. The “winder” 
by the engine pulls the lever thrice, no empty 
tub is put into the cage, and the speed of the 
rise is not so great. There springs up a miner. 
He is a man, if we could get through the coal 
dust, and on his account special precautions 
are taken, and woe betide the pit-men who 
neglect them. All these things are lovely to 
look at. But the actual descent is not so good. 
If you swing a child vehemently, the little in- 
nocent is likely to complain that he feels as 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


3ii 

though his “tummy were left in the air.” Now 
this is the exact sensation of dropping into a 
pit. The hangman adjusts the white cap. 
That is to say, you cram your hat down and 
go — drop away from the day and every one 
you ever loved, and your “tummy.” That 
comes down later. You arrive destitute of any 
inside, and are told for your comfort that in 
some of the English mines you can go down 
two thousand feet at the rate of sixty miles an 
hour. Two hundred feet at a considerably 
slower rate is enough — quite enough. Try it 
once or twice, and see what the air is like. 

The return journey is said to possess an ele- 
ment of risk. For this reason. If the 
“winder” of the engine at the top stopped to 
think, or hunted for a flea, or got a fit, or was 
choked by a fly, his engine would continue to 
wind and wind until the cage was hauled up 
to the pulley-wheels thirty feet in the air, 
where it would have three courses open to it. 
It might jam, break the wire rope and fall 
back unbridled into the pit, or part into several 
pieces, or be hauled with one tremendous 
bound right over the pulley-wheels and come 
down a bundle of shattered ribs. In any case 
the occupant would not be in a position to de- 
scribe the precise nature of the accident. But 


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a native “winder” knows these things, and 
thinks of them every time the three taps come 
to his ears. For him “over-winding” would 
mean loss of post and pay. Therefore he does 
not overwind. He generally has a keen riv- 
alry with a fellow-winder at another pit-bank, 
and lays himself out to see if he cannot bring 
more tons of coal to the bank than his bhai. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE PERILS OF THE PITS 

An engineer, who has built a bridge, can 
strike you nearly dead with professional facts ; 
the captain of a seventy-horse power Ganges 
river steamer can, in one hour, tell legends 
about the Sandheads and the James and Mary 
shoal sufficient to fill half a Pioneer , but a 
couple of days spent on, above, and in a coal 
mine yields more mixed information than two 
engineers and three captains. It is hopeless 
to pretend to understand it all. 

When your host says : “Ah, such an one is a 
thundering good fault-reader!” you smile 
hazily, and by way of keeping up the conversa- 
tion, adventure on the statement that fault- 
reading and palmistry are very popular amuse- 
ments. Then men laugh consumedly, and en- 
ter into explanations. 

Every one knows that coal strata, in com- 
mon with women, horses, and official superi- 
ors, have “faults” caused by some colic of the 
earth in the days when things were settling 
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into their places. A coal seam is suddenly 
sliced off as a pencil is cut through with one 
slanting blow of the penknife, and one-half is 
either pushed up or pushed down any number 
of feet. The miners work the seam till they 
come to this break-off, and then call for an ex- 
pert to “read the fault.” It is sometimes very 
hard to discover whether the sliced-off beam 
has gone up or down. Theoretically the end 
of the broken piece should show the direction. 
Practically its indications are not always clear. 
Then a good “fault-reader,” who must more 
than know geology, is a useful man, and is 
much prized, for the Giridih fields are full of 
faults and “dykes.” Tongues of what was 
once molten lava thrust themselves sheer into 
the coal, and the disgusted miner finds that for 
about twenty feet on each side of the tongue 
all the coal has been burned away. 

The head of the mine is supposed to foresee 
these things and ever so many more. He can 
tell you, without looking at the map, what is 
the geological formation of any thousand 
square miles of India ; he knows as much about 
brickwork and the building of houses, arches, 
and shafts as an average P. W. D. man; he 
has not only to know the intestines of a pump- 
ing or winding engine, but must be able to take 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


315 


them to pieces with his own hands, indicate on 
the spot such parts as need repair, and make 
drawings of anything that requires renewal; 
he knows how to lay out and build railways 
with a grade of one in twenty-seven; he has 
to carry in his head all the signals and points 
between and over which his locomotive en- 
gines work ; he has to be an electrician capable 
of controlling the apparatus that fires the dy- 
namite charges in the pits, and must thor- 
oughly understand boring operations with 
thousand-foot drills. Over and above this, he 
must know by name, at least, one thousand of 
the men on the works, and must fluently speak 
the vernaculars of the low castes. If he has 
Sonthali, which is more elaborate than Greek, 
so much the better for him. He must know 
how to handle men of all grades, and, while 
himself holding aloof, must possess sufficient 
grip of the men’s private lives to be able to 
see at once the merits of a charge of at- 
tempted abduction preferred by a clucking, 
croaking Kol against a fluent English-speak- 
ing Brahmin. For he is literally the Light of 
Justice, and to him the injured husband or the 
wrathful father looks for redress. He must 
be on the spot and take all responsibility when 
any specially risky job is under way in the pit, 


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and he can claim no single hour of the day or 
the night for his own. From eight in the 
morning till one in the afternoon he is coated 
with coal-dust and oil. From one till eight in 
the evening he has office work. After eight 
o’clock he is free to attend to anything that he 
may be wanted for. 

This is a soberly-drawn picture of a life that 
Sahibs on the mines actually enjoy. They are 
spared all private socio-official worry, for the 
Company, in its mixture of State and private 
interest, is as perfectly cold-blooded and de- 
void of bias as any great, grinding Depart- 
ment of the Empire. If certain things be done, 
well and good. If certain things be not done 
the defaulter goes, and his place is filled by 
another. The conditions of service are graven 
on stone. There may be generosity : there un- 
doubtedly is justice, but above all there is free- 
dom within broad limits. No irrepressible 
shareholder cripples the executive arm with 
suggestions and restrictions, and no private 
piques turn men’s blood to gall within them. 
Therefore men work like horses and are happy. 

When he can snatch a free hour, the grimy, 
sweating, cardigan-jacketed, ammunition- 
booted, pick-bearing ruffian turns into a well- 
kept English gentleman, who plays a good 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


317 


game of billiards, and has a batch of new books 
from England every week. The change is 
sudden, but in Giridih nothing is startling. It 
is right and natural that a man should be al- 
ternately Valentine and Orson, specially Orson. 
It is right and natural to drive — always be- 
hind a mad horse — away and away toward the 
lonely hills till the flaming coke ovens become 
glow-worms on the dark horizon, and in the 
wilderness to find a lovely English maiden 
teaching squat, filty Sonthal girls how to be- 
come Christians. Nothing is strange in Giri- 
dih, and the stories of the pits, the raffle of 
conversation that a man picks up as he passes, 
are quite in keeping with the place. Thanks 
to the law, which enacts that an Englishman 
must look after the native miners, and if any 
be killed, he and he alone has to explain satis- 
factorily that the accident was not due to pre- 
ventable causes, the death-roll is kept astound- 
ingly low. In one “bad” half-year six men 
out of the five thousand were killed, in another 
four, and in another none at all. Given 
“butcher bills” as small as these, it is not as- 
tonishing that the men in charge do their best 
to cut them down at any cost of time and 
sleep. As has been said before, a big accident 
would scare off the workers, for, in spite of 


CITY OF THE 


3i8 

the age of the mines — nearly thirty years — the 
hereditary pitman has not yet been evolved. 
But to small accidents the men are orientally 
apathetic. Be pleased to read of a death 
among the five thousand. 

A gang has been ordered to cut clay for the 
luting of the coke furnaces. The clay is piled 
in a huge bank in the open sunlight above 
ground. A coolie hacks and hacks till he has 
hewn out a small cave with twenty feet of clay 
above him. Why should he trouble to climb 
up the bank and bring down the eave of the 
cave? It is easier to cut in. The Sirdar of the 
gang is watching round the shoulder of the 
bank. The coolie cuts lazily as he stands: 
Sunday is very near, and he will get gloriously 
drunk in Giridih Bazar with his week’s earn- 
ings. He digs his own grave stroke by stroke, 
for he has not sense enough to see that under- 
cut clay is dangerous. He is a Sonthal from 
the hills. There is a smash and a dull thud, 
and his grave has shut down upon him in an 
avalanche of heavv-caked clay. 

The Sirdar calls to the Babu of the Ovens, 
and with the promptitude of his race the Babu 
loses his head. He runs puffily, without giv- 
ing orders, anywhere, everywhere. Finally he 
runs to the Sahib's house. The Sahib is at the 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


319 


other end of the collieries. He runs back. 
The Sahib has gone home to wash. Then his 
indiscretion strikes him. He should have sent 
runners — fleet-footed boys from the coal- 
screening gangs. He sends them and they fly. 
One catches the Sahib just changed after his 
bath. ‘‘There is a man dead at such a place” 
— he gasps, omitting to say whether it is a sur- 
face or a pit accident. On goes the grimy pit 
kit, and in three minutes the Sahib's dogcart is 
flying to the place indicated. 

They have dug out the Sonthal. His head 
is smashed in, spine and breastbone are broken, 
and the gang Sirdar, bowing double, throws 
the blame of the accident on the poor, shape- 
less, battered dead. “I had warned him, but 
he would not listen! Twice I warned him! 
These men are witnesses.” 

The Babu is shaking like a jelly. “Oh, sar, 
I have never seen a man killed before! Look 
at that eye, sar! I should have sent runners. 
I ran everywhere. I ran to your house. You 
were not in. I was running for hours. It was 
not my fault! It was the fault of the gang 
Sirdar.” He wrings his hands and gurgles. 
The best of accountants, but the poorest of 
coroners is he. No need to ask how the acci- 
dent happened. No need to listen to the Sir- 


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CITY OF THE 


dar and his “witnesses.” The Sonthal had 
been a fool, but it was the Sirdar’s business to 
protect him against his own folly. “Has he 
any people here?” 

“Yes, his rukni, his kept- woman, and his 
sister’s brother-in-law. His home is far-off.” 

The sister’s brother-in-law breaks through 
the crowd howling for vengeance on the Sir- 
dar. He will send for the police, he will have 
the price of his bhai’s blood full tale. The 
windmill arms and the angry eyes fall, for the 
Sahib is making the report of the death. 

“Will this Sirkar give me pensinf I am his 
wife,” a woman clamors, stamping her pewter- 
ankleted feet. “He was killed in your service. 
Where is his pensinf I am his wife.” “You 
lie! You’re his rukni. Keep quiet! Go! The 
pensin comes to ns.” The sister’s brother-in- 
law is not a refined man, but the rukni is his 
match. They are silenced. The Sahib takes 
the report, and the body is borne away. Be- 
fore to-morrow’s sun rises the Sirdar may find 
himself a simple “surface-coolie,” earning 
nine pice a day; and, in a week some Sonthal 
woman behind the hills may discover that she 
is entitled to draw monthly great wealth from 
the coffers of the Sirkar. But this will not 
happen if the sister’s brother-in-law can pre- 
vent it. He goes off swearing at the rukni. 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


3 21 


But, in the meantime, what have the rest of 
the dead man’s gang been doing ? They have, 
if you please, abating not one stroke, dug out 
all the clay, and would have it verified. They 
have seen their comrade die. He is dead. 
Bus ! Will the Sirdar take the tale of clay? 
And yet, were twenty men to be crushed by 
their own carelessness in the pit, these impas- 
sive workers would scatter like panic-stricken 
horses. 

But, turning from this sketch, let us set in 
order some of the stories of the pits. These 
are quaint tales. The miner-folk laugh when 
they tell them. In some of the mines the coal 
is blasted out by the dynamite which is fired 
by electricity from a battery on the surface. 
Two men place the charges, and then signal to 
be drawn up in the cage which hangs in the 
pit-eye. On one occasion two natives were en- 
trusted with the job. They performed their 
parts beautifully till the end, when the vaster 
idiot of the two scrambled into the cage, gave 
signal, and was hauled up before his friend 
could enter. 

Thirty or forty yards up the shaft all pos- 
sible danger for those in the cage was over, 
and the charge was accordingly exploded. 
Then it occurred to the man in the cage that 


322 


CITY OF THE 


his friend stood a very good chance of being 
by this time riven to pieces and choked. 

But the friend was wise in his generation. 
He had missed the cage, but found a coal-tub 
— one of the little iron trucks — and turning 
this upside down, had crawled into it. His ac- 
count of the explosion has never been pub- 
lished. When the charge went off, his shelter 
was battered in so much that men had to hack 
him out, for the tub had made, as it were, a 
tinned sardine of its occupant. He was abso- 
lutely uninjured, but his feelings were lacer- 
ated. On reaching the pit-bank his first words 
were : ‘‘I do not desire to go down the pit with 
that man any more.” His wish had been al- 
ready gratified, for “that man” had fled. Later 
on, the story goes, when “that man” found that 
the guilt of murder was not at his door, he re- 
turned, and was made a surface-coolie, and his 
hhai-band jeered at him as they passed to their 
better-paid occupation. 

Occasionally there are mild cyclones in the 
pits. An old working, perhaps a mile away, 
will collapse : a whole gallery sinking in bodily. 
Then the displaced air rushes through the in- 
habited mine, and, to quote their own expres- 
sion, blows the pitmen about “like dry leaves.” 
Few things are more amusing than the specta- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


323 


cle of a burly Tyne-side foreman who, failing 
to dodge around a corner in time, is “put 
down” by the wind, sitting fashion, on a 
knobby lump of coal. 

But most impressive of all is a tale they tell 
of a fire in a pit many years ago. The coal 
caught — light. They had to send earth and 
bricks down the shaft and build great dams 
across the galleries to choke the fire. Imagine 
the scene, a few hundred feet underground, 
with the air growing hotter and hotter each 
moment, and the carbonic acid gas trickling 
through the dams. After a time the rough 
dams gaped, and the gas poured in afresh, and 
the Englishmen went down and leeped the 
cracks between roof and dam-sill with any- 
thing they could get. Coolies fainted, and had 
to be taken away, but no one. died, and behind 
the kutcha dams they built great masonry 
ones, and bested that fire; though for a long 
time afterward, whenever they pumped water 
into it, the steam would puff out from crevices 
in the ground above. 

It is a queer life that they lead, these men of 
the coal-fields, and a “big” life to boot. To 
describe one-half of their labors would need a 
week at the least, and would be incomplete 
then. “If you want to see anything,” they 


3 2 4 


CITY OF THE 


say, “you should go over to the Baragunda 
copper-mines; you should look at the Barakar 
ironworks; you should see our boring opera- 
tions five miles away ; you should see how we 
sink pits; you should, above all, see Giridih 
Bazar on a Sunday. Why, you haven’t seen 
anything. There’s no end of a Sonthal Mis- 
sion hereabouts. All the little dev — dears 
have gone on a picnic. Wait till they come 
back, and see ’em learning to learn.” 

Alas! one cannot wait. At the most one 
can but thrust an impertinent pen skin-deep 
into matters only properly understood by spe- 
cialists. 


CHAPTER XV 


IN AN OPIUM FACTORY 

On the banks of the Ganges, forty miles be- 
low Benares as the crow flies, stands the 
Ghazipur Factory, an opium mint as it were, 
whence issue the precious cakes that are to re- 
plenish the coffers of the Indian Government. 
The busy season is setting in, for with April 
the opium comes in from districts after having 
run the gauntlet of the district officers of the 
Opium Department, who will pass it as fit for 
use. Then the really serious work begins un- 
der a roasting sun. The opium arrives by 
c kalians, regiments of one hundred jars, each 
holding one maund and each packed in a bas- 
ket and sealed atop. The district officer sub- 
mits forms — never was such a place for 
forms as the Ghazipur Factory — showing the 
quality and weight of each pot, and with the 
jars come a ziladar responsible for the safe 
carriage of the challans, their delivery and 
their virginity. If any pots are broken or 
tampered with an unfortunate individual 

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CITY OF THE 


called the import officer, and appointed to 
work like a horse from dawn till dewy eve, 
must examine the ziladar in charge of the 
challan and reduce his statement to writing. 
Fancy getting any native to explain how a 
matka has been smashed. But the perfect 
flower is about as valuable as silver. 

Then all the pots have to be weighed, and 
the weights — Calcutta Mint, if you please — 
and the beams must be daily tested. The 
weight of each pot is recorded on the pot, in 
a book, and goodness knows where else, and 
every one has to sign certificates that the 
weighing is correct. Nota bene. The pots 
have been weighed once in the district and 
once in the factory. Therefore a certain num- 
ber of them are taken at random and weighed 
afresh before they are opened. This is only 
the beginning of the long series of checks. All 
sorts of inquiries are made about light pots, 
and then the testing begins. Every single, 
serially-numbered pot has to be tested for 
quality. A native called the purkhea drives 
his fist into the opium, rubs and smells it, and 
calls out the class for the benefit of the opium 
examiner. A sample picked between finger 
and thumb is thrown into a jar, and if the 
opium examiner thinks the purkhea has said 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


327 


sooth, the class of the jar is marked in chalk, 
and everything is entered in a book. Every 
ten samples are put in a locked box with du- 
plicated keys, and sent over to the laboratory 
for assay. With the tenth boxful— and this 
marks the end of the challan of a hundred jars 
— the Englishman in charge of the testing 
signs the test paper, and enters the name of 
the native tester and sends it over to the labor- 
atory. For convenience sake, it may be as 
well to say that, unless distinctly stated to the 
contrary, every single thing in Ghazipur is 
locked, and every operation is conducted under 
more than police supervision. 

In the laboratory each set of ten samples is 
thoroughly mixed by hand, a quarter ounce 
lump is then tested for starch adulteration by 
iodine which turns the decoction blue, and, if 
necessary, for gum adulteration by alcohol 
which makes the decoction filmy. If adultera- 
tion be shown, all the ten pots of that set are 
tested separately. When the sinful pot is dis- 
covered, all the opium is tested in four-pound 
lumps. Over and above this test, three sam- 
ples of one hundred grains each are taken 
from the jummakaroed set of ten samples, 
dried on a steam table and then weighed for 
consistence. The result is written down in a 


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CITY OF THE 


ten-columned form in the assay register, and 
by the mean result are those ten pots paid for. 
This, after everything has been done in dupli- 
cate and countersigned, completes the test and 
assay. If a district officer has classed the 
opium in a glaringly wrong way, he is thus 
caught and reminded of his error. No one 
trusts any one in Ghazipur. They are always 
weighing, testing and assaying. 

Before the opium can be used it must be 
“alligated” in big vats. The pots are emptied 
into these, and special care is taken that none 
of the drug sticks to the hands of the coolies. 
Opium has a special knack of doing this, and 
therefore coolies are searched at most inoppor- 
tune moments. There are a good many Ma- 
homedans in Ghazipur, and they would all like 
a little opium. The pots after emptying are 
smashed up and scraped, and heaved down the 
steep river bank of the factory, where they 
help to keep the Ganges in its place, so many 
are they, as do the little earthern bowls in 
which the opium cakes are made. People are 
forbidden to wander about the river front of 
the factory in search of remnants of opium on 
the strands. There are no remnants, but peo- 
ple will not credit this. After vatting, as has 
been said, the big vats, holding from one to 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


329 


three thousand maunds, are probed with test 
rods, and the samples are treated just like sam- 
ples of the challans, everybody writing every- 
thing in duplicate and signing it. Having se- 
cured the mean consistence of each vat, the 
requisite quantity of each blend — Calcutta Mint 
scales again, and an unlimited quantity of su- 
pervision — is weighed out, thrown into an al- 
ligation vat, of 250 maunds, and worked up by 
the feet of coolies, who hang on to ropes and 
drag their legs painfully through the probe. 
Try to wade in mud of jo° consistency, and 
see what it is like. 

This completes the working of the opium. 
It is now ready to be made into cakes after a 
final assay. Man has done nothing to improve 
it since it streaked the capsule of the poppy — 
this mysterious drug. Perhaps half a hun- 
dred sinners have tried to adulterate it and 
been paid out accordingly, but that has been 
the utmost. April, May, and June are the 
months for receiving opium, and in the winter 
months come the packing and the dispatch. 

At the beginning of the cold weather Ghazi- 
pur holds locked up a trifle, say, of three and a 
half millions sterling in opium. Now, there 
may be only a paltry three-quarters of a mil- 
lion on hand, and that is going out at the rate 


330 


CITY OF THE 


of one Viceroy’s salary for two and a half years 
per diem. For such a flea-bite it seems absurd 
to prohibit smoking - in the factory or to stud 
the place with tanks and steam fire-engines. 
Really, Ghazipur is unnecessarily timid. A 
long time ago some one threatened to cast 
down a tree sacred to Mahadeo. In a very 
few days, just as soon as Mahadeo got news 
of the insult, a fire broke out and damaged 
thousands of pounds’ worth of opium. 

But all this time we have not gone through 
the factory. There are ranges and ranges of 
gigantic godowns, huge barns that can hold 
over half-a-million pounds’ worth of opium. 
There are acres of bricked floor, regiments on 
regiments of chests; and yet more godowns 
and more godowns. The heart of the whole 
is the laboratory which is full of the sick faint 
smell of a chandu-khana. This makes Ghazi- 
pur indignant. “That’s the smell of opium. 
We don’t need chandu here. You don’t know 
what real opium smells like. Chandu-khana 
indeed! That’s refined opium under treatment 
for morphia, and cocaine and perhaps nar - 
coine” “Very well, let’s see some of the real 
opium made for the China market.” “We 
shan’t be making any for another six weeks at 
earliest; but we can show you one cake made, 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


331 


and you must imagine two hundred and fifty 
men making ’em as hard as they can up to one 
every four minutes.” A Sirdar of cake-mak- 
ers is called, and appears with a miniature 
dhobi’s washing board on which he sits, a little 
square box of dark wood, a tin cup, an earthen 
bowl, and a mass of poppy petal chupattis. A 
larger earthen bowl holds a mass of what looks 
like bad Cape tobacco. “What’s that?” 
“Trash — dried poppy leaves, not petals, broken 
up and used for packing cakes in. You’ll see 
presently.” The cake-maker sits down and 
receives a lump of opium, weighed out, of one 
seer seven chittacks and a half, neither more 
nor less. “That’s pure opium of seventy con- 
sistence.” Every allowance is weighed. 
“What are they weighing that brown water 
for?” “That’s leiva — thin opium at fifty con- 
sistence. It’s the paste. He gets four chittacks 
and a half.” “And do they weigh the chu- 
pattis?” “Of course. Five chittacks of chu- 
pattis — about sixteen chupattis of all three 
kinds.” This is overwhelming. This Sirdar 
takes a brass hemispherical cup and wets it 
with a rag. Then he tears a chupatti across 
so that it fits into the cup without a wrinkle, 
and pastes it with the thin opium, the lewa. 
After this his actions become incomprehensi- 


33 2 


CITY OF THE 


ble, but there is evidently a deep method in 
them. Chupatti after chupatti is torn across, 
dressed with lewa and pressed down into the 
cup, the fringes hanging over the edge of the 
bowl. He takes half chupattis and fixes them 
skilfully, picking now first-class and now sec- 
ond-class ones. Everything is gummed into 
everything else with the lewa, and he presses 
all down by twisting his wrists inside the bowl. 
“He is making the gattia now.” Gattia means 
a tight coat at any rate, so there is some ray of 
enlightenment. Torn chupatti follows torn 
chupatti , till the bowl is lined half-an-inch deep 
with them, and they all glisten with the greasy 
lezm. He now takes up an ungummed chu- 
patti and fits it carefully all round. The opium 
is dropped tenderly upon this, and a curious 
washing motion of the hand follows. The 
opium is drawn up into a cone as one by one 
the Sirdar picks up the overlapping portions of 
the chupattis that hung outside the bowl and 
plasters them against the drug. He makes 
a clever waist-belt while he keeps all the flags 
in place, and so strengthens the midriff of the 
lump. He tucks in the top of the cone with 
his thumbs, brings the fringe of chupattis over 
to close the opening, and pastes fresh leaves 
upon all. The cone has now taken a spherical 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


333 


shape, and he gives it the finishing touch by 
gumming a large chupatti , one of the “moon” 
kind, set aside from the first, on the top, so 
deftly that no wrinkle is visible. The cake is 
now complete, and all the Celestials of the 
middle kingdom shall not be able to disprove 
that it weighs two seers one and three-quarter 
chittacks, with a play of half a chittack for the 
personal equation. 

The Sirdar takes it up and rubs it in the 
bran-like poppy trash in the big bowl, so that 
two-thirds of it are powdered with the trash 
and one-third is fair and shiny chupatti. 
“That is the difference between a Ghazipur 
and a Patna cake. Our cakes have always an 
unpowdered head. The Patna ones are rolled 
in trash all over. You can tell them anywhere 
by that mark. Now we’ll cut this one open 
and you can see how a section looks.” One 
half of an inch as nearly as may be is the thick- 
ness of the chupatti shell all round the cake, 
and even in this short time so firmly has the 
lewa set that any attempt at sundering the 
skins of chupatti is followed by the rending of 
the poppy petals that compose the chupatti. 
“You’ve seen in detail what a cake is made of 
— that is to say, pure opium 70 consistence, 
poppy-petal pancakes, lewa, of S 2 '~S° consist- 


334 


CITY OF THE 


ence, and a powdering of poppy-trash.” “But 
why are you so particular about the shell?” 
“Because of the China market. The Chinaman 
likes every inch of the stuff we send him, and 
uses it. He boils the shell and gets out every 
grain of the lezva used to gum it together. He 
smokes that after he has dried it. Roughly 
speaking, the value of the cake we’ve just cut 
open is two pound ten. All the time it is in 
our hands we have to look after it and check 
it, and treat it as though it were gold. It 
mustn’t have too much moisture in it, or it will 
swell and crack, and if it is too dry John 
Chinaman won’t have it. He values his opium 
for qualities just the opposite of those in 
Smyrna opium. Smyrna opium gives as much 
as ten per cent, of morphia, and is nearly solid 
— 90 consistence. Our opium does not give 
more than three or three and a half per cent, 
of morphia, on the average, and, as you know, 
it is only 70 or in Patna 75 consistence. That 
is the drug the Chinaman likes. He can get 
the maximum of extract out of it by soaking 
it in hot water, and he likes the flavor. He 
knows it is absolutely pure too, and it comes 
to him in good condition.” “But has nobody 
found out any patent way of making these 
cakes and putting skins on them by machin- 


DREADFUL NIGHT 


335 


ery?” “Not yet. Poppy to poppy. There’s 
nothing better. Here are a couple of cakes 
made in 1849, when they tried experiments in 
wrapping them in paper and cloth. You can 
see that they are beautifully wrapped and sewn 
like cricket balls, but it would take about half- 
an-hour to make such cakes, and we could not 
be sure of keeping the aroma in them. Noth- 
ing like poppy plant for poppy drug.” 

And this is the way the drug, which yields 
such a splendid income to the Indian Govern- 
ment is prepared. To tell how it is thereafter 
kept in store, packed for export, put upon 
the market at certain fixed periods, and shipped 
away, for John Chinaman’s consumption 
chiefly, would be a tame story. The interest 
lies in the actual manufacture and manipula- 
tion of the cakes, and we have seen how this is 
done in the busy factory at Ghazipur. 

THE END, 



AMERICAN NOTES 





AT THE GOLDEN GATE 




CONTENTS 


PAGE 

At the Golden Gate 343 

American Politics 369 

American Salmon 393 

The Yellowstone 41 1 

Chicago 431 

The American Army 451 

America’s Defenseless Coasts .... 463 




* 



















































AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


“Serene, indifferent to fate, 

Thou sittest at the Western Gate; 

Thou seest the white seas fold their tents, 
Oh, warder of two continents ; 

Thou drawest all things, small and great, 
To thee, beside the Western Gate.” 



HIS is what Bret Harte has written of the 


great city of San Francisco, and for 
the past fortnight I have been wondering what 
made him do it. 

There is neither serenity nor indifference to 
be found in these parts; and evil would it be 
for the continents whose wardship were in- 
trusted to so reckless a guardian. 

Behold me pitched neck-and-crop from 
twenty days of the high seas into the whirl of 
California, deprived of any guidance, and left 
to draw my own conclusions. Protect me 
from the wrath of an outraged community if 
these letters be ever read by American eyes! 
San Francisco is a mad city — inhabited for the 
most part by perfectly insane people, whose 
women are of a remarkable beauty. 


343 


344 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


When the “City of Pekin” steamed through 
the Golden Gate, I saw with great joy that the 
blockhouse which guarded the mouth of the 
“finest harbor in the world, sir,” could be si- 
lenced by two gunboats from Hong Kong with 
safety, comfort, and despatch. Also, there was 
not a single American vessel of war in the 
harbor. 

This may sound bloodthirsty; but remem- 
ber, I had come with a grievance upon me — 
the grievance of the pirated English books. 

Then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere I 
could gasp held me in his toils. He pumped 
me exhaustively while I was getting ashore, 
demanding of all things in the world news 
about Indian journalism. It is an awful thing 
to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. 
I spoke the truth to the evil-minded Custom 
House man who turned my most sacred rai- 
ment on a floor composed of stable refuse and 
pine splinters; but the reporter overwhelmed 
me not so much by his poignant audacity as 
his beautiful ignorance. I am sorry now that 
I did not tell him more lies as I passed into a 
city of three hundred thousand white men. 
Think of it! Three hundred thousand white 
men and women gathered in one spot, walking 
upon real pavements in front of plate-glass- 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 345 


windowed shops, and talking something that 
at first hearing was not very different from 
English. It was only when I had tangled my- 
self up in a hopeless maze of small wooden 
houses, dust, street refuse, and children who 
played with empty kerosene tins, that I dis- 
covered the difference of speech. 

“You want to go to the Palace Hotel?” said 
an affable youth on a dray. “What in hell are 
you doing here, then? This is about the low- 
est ward in the city. Go six blocks north to 
corner of Geary and Markey, then walk 
around till you strike corner of Gutter and 
Sixteenth, and that brings you there.” 

I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of 
these directions, quoting but from a disordered 
memory. 

“Amen,” I said. “But who am I that I 
should strike the corners of such as you name ? 
Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, 
and might hit back. Bring it down to dots, 
my son.” 

I thought he would have smitten me, but he 
didn’t. He explained that no one ever used 
the word “street,” and that every one was sup- 
posed to know how the streets ran, for some- 
times the names were upon the lamps and 
sometimes they weren’t. Fortified with these 


346 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


directions, I proceeded till I found a mighty 
street, full of sumptuous buildings four and 
five stories high, but paved with rude cobble- 
stones, after the fashion of the year i. 

Here a tram-car, without any visible means 
of support, slid stealthily behind me and nearly 
struck me in the back. This was the famous 
cable car of San Francisco, which runs by 
gripping an endless wire rope sunk in the 
ground, and of which I will tell you more 
anon. A hundred yards further there was a 
slight commotion in the street, a gathering to- 
gether of three or four, something that glit- 
tered as it moved very swiftly. A ponderous 
Irish gentleman, with priest’s cords in his hat 
and a small nickel-plated badge on his fat 
bosom, emerged from the knot supporting a 
Chinaman who had been stabbed in the eye 
and was bleeding like a pig. The bystanders 
went their ways, and the Chinaman, assisted 
by the policeman, his own. Of course this 
was none of my business, but I rather wanted 
to know what had happened to the gentleman 
who had dealt the stab. It said a great deal 
for the excellence of the municipal arrange- 
ment of the town that a surging crowd did not 
at once block the street to see what was going 
forward. I was the sixth man and the last 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 347 


who assisted at the performance, and my curi- 
osity was six times the greatest. Indeed, I 
felt ashamed of showing it. 

There were no more incidents till I reached 
the Palace Hotel, a seven-storied warren of 
humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All 
the travel books will tell you about hotel ar- 
rangements in this country. They should be 
seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly — 
and this letter is written after a thousand miles 
of experiences — that money will not buy you 
service in the West. When the hotel clerk — 
the man who awards your room to you and 
who is supposed to give you information — 
when that resplendent individual stoops to at- 
tend to your wants, he does so whistling or 
humming or picking his teeth, or pauses to 
converse with some one he knows. These per- 
formances, I gather, are to impress upon you 
that he is a free man and your equal. From 
his general appearance and the size of his dia- 
monds he ought to be your superior. There 
is no necessity for this swaggering self-con- 
sciousness of freedom. Business is business, 
and the man who is paid to attend to a man 
might reasonably devote his whole attention 
to the job. Out of office hours he can take his 
coach and four and pervade society if he 
pleases. 


348 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 

In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare 
of an electric light, sat forty or fifty men, and 
for their use and amusement were provided 
spittoons of infinite capacity and generous 
gape. Most of the men wore frock-coats and 
top-hats — the things that we in India put on at 
a wedding-breakfast, if we possess them — but 
they all spat. They spat on principle. The 
spittoons were on the staircases, in each bed- 
room — yea, and in chambers even more sa- 
cred than these. They chased one into retire- 
ment, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor 
round the bar, and they were all used, every 
reeking one of them. 

Just before I began to feel deathly sick an- 
other reporter grappled me. What he wanted 
to know was the precise area of India in square 
miles. I referred him to Whitaker. He had 
never heard of Whitaker. He wanted it from 
my own mouth, and I would not tell him. 
Then he swerved off, just like the other man, 
to details of journalism in our own country. 
I ventured to suggest that the interior econ- 
omy of a paper most concerned the people who 
worked it. 

“That’s the very thing that interests us,” he 
said. “Have you got reporters anything like 
our reporters on Indian newspapers?” 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 349 


“We have not,” I said, and suppressed the 
“thank God” rising to my lips. 

“Why haven’t you?” said he. 

“Because they would die,” I said. 

It was exactly like talking to a child — a very 
rude little child. He would begin almost every 
sentence with, “Now tell me something about 
India,” and would turn aimlessly from one 
question to the other without the least contin- 
uity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. 
The man was a revelation to me. To his ques- 
tions I returned answers mendacious and eva- 
sive. After all, it really did not matter what 
I said. He could not understand. I can only 
hope and pray that none of the readers of the 
Pioneer will ever see that portentous inter- 
view. The man made me out to be an idiot 
several sizes more driveling than my destiny 
intended, and the rankness of his ignorance 
managed to distort the few poor facts with 
which I supplied him into large and elaborate 
lies. “Then,” thought I, “the matter of Amer- 
ican journalism shall be looked into later on. 
At present I will enjoy myself.” 

No man rose to tell me what were the lions 
of the place. No one volunteered any sort of 
conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this 
big city of white folk. By instinct I sought re- 


350 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


freshment, and came upon a bar-room full of 
bad Salon pictures in which men with hats 
on the backs of their heads were wolfing food 
from a counter. It was the institution of the 
“free lunch” I had struck. You paid for a 
drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. 
For something less than a rupee a day a man 
can feed himself sumptuously in San Fran- 
cisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remem- 
ber this if ever you are stranded in these parts. 

Later I began a vast but unsystematic ex- 
ploration of the streets. I asked for no names. 
It was enough that the pavements were full of 
white men and women, the streets clanging 
with traffic, and that the restful roar of a great 
city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided 
to all points of the compass at once. I took 
them one by one till I could go no further. 
San Francisco has been pitched down on the 
sand bunkers of the Bikaneer desert. About 
one-fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the 
sea — any old-timers will tell you all about that. 
The remainder is just ragged, unthrifty sand 
hills, to-day pegged down by houses. 

From an English point of view there has 
not been the least attempt at grading those 
hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade 
the hillocks of Sind. The cable cars have for 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 351 


all practical purposes made San Francisco a 
dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, 
but slide equably on their appointed courses 
from one end to the other of a six-mile street. 
They turn corners almost at right angles, cross 
other lines, and for aught I know may run up 
the sides of houses. There is no visible agency 
of their flight, but once in a while you shall pass 
a five-storied building humming with machin- 
ery that winds up an everlasting wire cable, 
and the initiated will tell you that here is the 
mechanism. I gave up asking questions. If 
it pleases Providence to make a car run up 
and down a slit in the ground for many miles, 
and if for twopence halfpenny I can ride in 
that car, why shall I seek the reasons of the 
miracle? Rather let me look out of the win- 
dows till the shops give place to thousands and 
thousands of little houses made of wood (to 
imitate stone), each house just big enough for 
a man and his family. Let me watch the peo- 
ple in the cars and try to find out in what man- 
ner they differ from us, their ancestors. 

It grieves me now that I cursed them (in 
the matter of book piracy), because I perceived 
that my curse is working and that their speech 
is becoming a horror already. They delude 
themselves into the belief that they talk Eng- 


352 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


lish — the English — and I have already been 
pitied for speaking with “an English accent.” 
The man who pitied me spoke, so far as I was 
concerned, the language of thieves. And they 
all do. Where we put the accent forward they 
throw it back, and vice versa ; where we give 
the long “a” they use the short, and words so 
simple as to be past mistaking they pronounce 
somewhere up in the dome of their heads. 
How do these things happen? 

Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yan- 
kee school-marm, the cider and the salt cod- 
fish of the Eastern States, are responsible for 
what he calls a nasal accent. I know better. 
They stole books from across the water with- 
out paying for ’em, and the snort of delight 
was fixed in their nostrils forever by a just 
Providence. That is why they talk a foreign 
tongue to-day. 

“Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so’s 
parrots. But this ’ere tortoise is an insect, so 
there ain’t no charge,” as the old porter said. 

A Hindoo is a Hindoo and a brother to the 
man who knows his vernacular. And a 
Frenchman is French because he speaks his 
own language. But the American has no lan- 
guage. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, ac- 
cent, and so forth. Now that I have heard 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 353 


their voices, all the beauty of Bret Harte is 
being ruined for me, because I find myself 
catching through the roll of his rhythmical 
prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. 
Get an American lady to read to you “How 
Santa Clause Came to Simpson's Bar,” and 
see how much is, under her tongue, left of the 
beauty of the original. 

But I am sorry for Bret Harte. It happened 
this way. A reporter asked me what I thought 
of the city, and I made answer suavely that it 
was hallowed ground to me, because of Bret 
Harte. That was true. 

“Well,” said the reporter, “Bret Harte 
claims California, but California don't claim 
Bret Harte. He’s been so long in England 
that he’s quite English. Have you seen our 
cracker factories or the new offices of the Ex- 
aminer. 

He could not understand that to the out- 
side world the city was worth a great deal less 
than the man. I never intended to curse the 
people with a provincialism so vast as this. 

But let us return to our sheep — which 
means the sea-lions of the Cliff House. They 
are the great show of San Francisco. You 
take a train which pulls up the middle of the 
street (it killed two people the day before yes- 


354 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


terday, being unbraked and driven absolutely 
regardless of consequences), and you pull up 
somewhere at the back of the city on the Pa- 
cific beach. Originally the cliffs and their ap- 
proaches must have been pretty, but they have 
been so carefully defiled with advertisements 
that they are now one big blistered abomina- 
tion. A hundred yards from the shore stood a 
big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek 
sea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped 
in the spouting surges. No bold man had 
painted the creatures sky-blue or advertised 
newspapers on their backs, wherefore they did 
not match the landscape, which was chiefly 
hoarding. Some day, perhaps, whatever sort 
of government may obtain in this country will 
make a restoration of the place and keep it 
clean and neat. At present the sovereign peo- 
ple, of whom I have heard so much already, 
are vending cherries and painting the virtues 
of “Little Bile Beans” all over it. 

Night fell over the Pacific, and the white 
sea-fog whipped through the streets, dimming 
the splendors of the electric lights. It is the 
use of this city, her men and women folk, to 
parade between the hours of eight and ten a 
certain street called Kearney Street, where the 
finest shops are situated. Here the click of 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 355 

high heels on the pavement is loudest, here the 
lights are brightest, and here the thunder of 
the traffic is most overwhelming. I watched 
Young California, and saw that it was, at 
least, expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, 
and self-asserting in conversation. Also the 
women were very fair. Perhaps eighteen days 
aboard ship had something to do with my un- 
reserved admiration. The maidens were of 
generous build, large, well groomed, and at- 
tired in raiment that even to my inexperienced 
eyes must have cost much. Kearney Street at 
nine o’clock levels all distinctions of rank as 
impartially as the grave. Again and again I 
loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent 
beings, only to overhear, when I expected the 
level voice of culture, the staccato “Sez he,” 
“Sez I” that is the mark of the white servant- 
girl all the world over. 

This was depressing because, in spite of all 
that goes to the contrary, fine feathers ought 
to make fine birds. There was wealth — un- 
limited wealth — in the streets, but not an ac- 
cent that would not have been dear at fifty 
cents. Wherefore, revolving in my mind that 
these folk were barbarians, I was presently en- 
lightened and made aware that they also were 
the heirs of all the ages, and civilized after 


356 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


all. There appeared before me an affable 
stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a 
blue and an innocent eye. Addressing me by 
name, he claimed to have met me in New 
York, at the Windsor, and to this claim I 
gave qualified assent. I did not remember 
the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why, 
then — I waited developments. 

“And what did you think of Indiana when 
you came through ?” was the next question. 

It revealed the mystery of previous acquaint- 
ance and one or two other things. With re- 
prehensible carelessness my friend of the light- 
blue eye had looked up the name of his victim 
in the hotel register, and read “Indiana” for 
India. 

The provincialism with which I had cursed 
his people extended to himself. He could not 
imagine an Englishman coming through the 
States from west to east instead of by the reg- 
ularly ordained route. My fear was that in his 
delight in finding me so responsive he would 
make remarks about New York and the Wind- 
sor which I could not understand. And, in- 
deed, he adventured in this direction once or 
twice, asking me what I thought of such and 
such streets, which from his tone I gathered to 
be anything but respectable. It is trying to 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 357 


talk unknown New York in almost unknown 
San Francisco. But my friend was merciful. 
He protested that I was one after his own 
heart, and pressed upon me rare and curious 
drinks at more than one bar. These drinks 1 
accepted with gratitude, as also the cigars with 
which his pockets were stored. He would 
show me the life of the city. Having no de- 
sire to watch a weary old play again, I evaded 
the offer and received in lieu of the devil’s in- 
struction much coarse flattery. Curiously con- 
stituted is the soul of man. Knowing how and 
where this man lied, waiting idly for the finale, 
I was distinctly conscious, as he bubbled com- 
pliments in my ear, of soft thrills of gratified 
pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I 
was wise, quoth he — any body could see that 
with half an eye ; sagacious, versed in the ways 
of the world, an acquaintance to be desired; 
one who had tasted the cup of life with dis- 
cretion. 

All this pleased me, and in a measure 
numbed the suspicion that was thoroughly 
aroused. Eventually the blue-eyed one dis- 
covered, nay, insisted, that I had a taste for 
cards (this was clumsily worked in, but it 
was my fault, for in that I met him half-way 
and allowed him no chance of good acting). 


358 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


Hereupon I laid my head upon one side and 
simulated unholy wisdom quoting odds and 
ends of poker talk, all ludicrously misapplied. 
My friend kept his countenance admirably, and 
well he might, for five minutes later we ar- 
rived, always by the purest of chance, at a place 
where we could play cards and also frivol with 
Louisiana State Lottery tickets. Would I 
play? 

“Nay/’ said I, “for to me cards have neither 
meaning nor continuity ; but let us assume that 
I am going to play. How would you and your 
friends get to work? Would you play a 
straight game, or make me drunk, or — well, 
the fact is, I’m a newspaper man, and Ld be 
much obliged if you’d let me know something 
about bunco steering.” 

My blue-eyed friend erected himself into an 
obelisk of profanity. He cursed me by his 
gods — the right and left bower ; he even cursed 
the very good cigars he had given me. But, 
the storm over, he quieted down and explained. 
I apologized for causing him to waste an even- 
ing, and we spent a very pleasant time to- 
gether. 

Inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty 
rushing to conclusions, were the rocks that he 
had split on, but he got his revenge when he 
said : 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


“How would I play with you? From all 
the poppy-cock ( Anglice bosh) you talked 
about poker, Fd ha’ played a straight game, 
and skinned you. I wouldn’t have taken the 
trouble to make you drunk. You never knew 
anything of the game, but how I was mistaken 
in going to work on you, makes me sick.” 

He glared at me as though I had done him 
an injury. To-day I know how it is that year 
after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, 
who is the confidence trick and the card- 
sharper man of other climes, secures his prey. 
He clavers them over with flattery as the snake 
clavers the rabbit. The incident depressed me 
because it showed I had left the innocent East 
far behind and was come to a country where 
a man must look out for himself. The very 
hotels bristled with notices about keeping my 
door locked and depositing my valuables in a 
safe. The white man in a lump is bad. Weep- 
ing softly for O-Toyo (little I knew that my 
heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I 
fell asleep in the clanging hotel. 

Next morning I had entered upon the de- 
ferred inheritance. There are no princes in 
America — at least with crowns on their heads 
— but a generous-minded member of some 
royal family received my letter of introduction. 


360 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


Ere the day closed I was a member of the two 
clubs, and booked for many engagements to 
dinner and party. Now, this prince, upon 
whose financial operations be continual in- 
crease, had no reason, nor had the others, his 
friends, to put himself out for the sake of one 
Briton more or less, but he rested not till he 
had accomplished all in my behalf that a 
mother could think of for her debutante 
daughter. 

Do you know the Bohemian Club of San 
Francisco? They say its fame extends over 
the world. It was created, somewhat on the 
lines of the Savage, by men who wrote or 
drew things, and has blossomed into most un- 
republican luxury. The ruler of the place is an 
owl — an owl standing upon a skull and cross- 
bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the 
man of letters and the end of his hopes for im- 
mortality. The owl stands on the staircase, a 
statue four feet high; is carved in the wood- 
work, flutters on the frescoed ceiling, is 
stamped on the note-paper, and hangs on the 
walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. 
Under his wing ’twas my privilege to meet 
with white men whose lives were not chained 
down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine 
articles instead of reading them hurriedly in 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 361 


the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures 
instead of contenting themselves with cheap 
etchings picked up at another man’s sale of 
effects. Mine were all the rights of social in- 
tercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony- 
hearted stepmother of collectors, has swindled 
us out of. Treading soft carpets and breath- 
ing the incense of superior cigars, I wandered 
from room to room studying the paintings in 
which the members of the club had caricatured 
themselves, their associates, and their aims. 
There was a slick French audacity about the 
workmanship of these men of toil unbending 
that went straight to the heart of the beholder. 
And yet it was not altogether French. A dry 
grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked 
the difference. The men painted as they spoke 
— with certainty. The club indulges in revel- 
ries which it calls “ jinks” — high and low, at 
intervals — and each of these gatherings is 
faithfully portrayed in oils by hands that know 
their business. In this club were no amateurs 
spoiling canvas, because they fancied they 
could handle oils without knowledge of 
shadows or anatomy — no gentleman of leisure 
ruining the temper of publishers and an al- 
ready ruined market with attempts to write, 
“because everybody writes something these 
days.” 


362 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


My hosts were working, or had worked for 
their daily bread with pen or paint, and their 
talk for the most part was of the shop — shoppy 
— that is to say, delightful. They extended a 
large hand of welcome, and were as brethren, 
and I did homage to the owl and listened to 
their talk. An Indian club about Christmas- 
time will yield, if properly worked, an abund- 
ant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering 
of Americans from the uttermost ends of their 
own continent, the tales are larger, thicker, 
more spinous, and even more azure than any 
Indian variety. Tales of the war I heard told 
by an ex-officer of the South over his evening 
drink to a colonel of the Northern army, my 
introducer, who had served as a trooper in the 
Northern Horse, throwing in emendations 
from time to time. “Tales of the Law,” which 
in this country is an amazingly elastic affair, 
followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive 
me for recording one tale that struck me as 
new. It may interest the up-country Bar in 
India. 

Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a 
young lawyer, who feared not God, neither re- 
garded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of 
the man were given at great length.) To him 
no case had ever come as a client, partly be- 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 36 3 


cause he lived in a district where lynch law 
prevailed, and partly because the most desper- 
ate prisoner shrunk from intrusting himself to 
the mercies of a phenomenal stammerer. But 
in time there happened an aggravated murder 
— so bad, indeed, that by common consent the 
citizens decided, as a prelude to lynching, to 
give the real law a chance. They could, in 
fact, gambol round that murder. They met — 
the court in its shirt-sleeves — and against the 
raw square of the Court House window a 
temptingly suggestive branch of a tree fretted 
the sky. No one appeared for the prisoner, 
and, partly in jest, the court advised young 
Samuelson to take up the case. 

“The prisoner is undefended, Sam,” said the 
court. “The square thing to do would be for 
you to take him aside and do the best you can 
for him.” 

Court, jury, and witness then adourned to 
the veranda, while Samuelson led his client 
aside to the Court House cells. An hour 
passed ere the lawyer returned alone. Mutely 
the audience questioned. 

“May it p-p-please the c-court,” said Sam- 
uelson, “my client’s case is a b-b-b-bad one — a 
d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the 
b-b-best I c-could for him, judge, so I’ve jest 


364 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


given him y-your b-b-bay gelding, an’ told him 
to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-pro- 
fessional opinion being he’d be hanged 
quicker’n h-h-hades if he dallied here. B-by 
this time my client’s ’bout fifteen mile out yon- 
der somewheres. That was the b-b-best I 
could do for him, may it p-p-please the court.” 

The young man, escaping punishment in lieu 
of the prisoner, made his fortune ere five 
years. 

Other voices followed, with equally won- 
drous tales of riata-throwing in Mexico and 
Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, 
of newspaper wars waged in godless Chicago 
(I could not help being interested, but they 
were not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and 
violent in Montana and Dakota, of the loves 
of half-breed maidens in the South, and fan- 
tastic huntings for gold in mysterious Alaska. 
Above all, they told the story of the building 
of old San Francisco, when the “finest collec- 
tion of humanity on God’s earth, sir, started 
this town, and the water came up to the foot 
of Market Street.” Very terrible were some 
of the tales, grimly humorous the others, and 
the men in broadcloth and fine linen who told 
them had played their parts in them. 

“And now and again when things got too 


AT THE GOLDEN GATE 365 


bad they would toll the city bell, and the Vigi- 
lance Committee turned out and hanged the 
suspicious characters. A man didn’t begin to 
be suspected in those days till he had com- 
mitted at least one unprovoked murder,” said 
a calm-eyed, portly old gentleman. 

I looked at the pictures around me, the 
noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter behind me, 
the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet 
beneath. It was hard to realize that even 
twenty years ago you could see a man hanged 
with great pomp. Later on I found reason to 
change my opinion. The tales gave me a head- 
ache and set me thinking. How in the world 
was it possible to take in even one thousandth 
of this huge, roaring, many-sided continent? 
In the tobacco-scented silence of the sumptu- 
ous library lay Professor Bryce’s book on the 
American Republic. 

“It is an omen,” said I. “He has done all 
things in all seriousness, and he may be pur- 
chased for half a guinea. Those who desire 
information of the most undoubted, must refer 
to his pages. For me is the daily round of 
vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of 
the hour and intercourse with the traveling- 
companion of the day. I will not ‘do’ this 
country at all.” 


366 AT THE GOLDEN GATE 


And I forgot all about India for fen days 
while I went out to dinners and watched the 
social customs of the people, which are entirely 
different from our customs, and was intro- 
duced to men of many millions. These per- 
sons are harmless in their earlier stages — 
that is to say, a man worth three or four mil- 
lion dollars may be a good talker, clever, 
amusing, and of the world ; a man with twice 
that amount is to be avoided, and a twenty 
million man is — just twenty millions. Take 
an instance. I was speaking to a newspaper 
man about seeing the proprietor of his journal, 
as in my innocence I supposed newspaper men 
occasionally did. My friend snorted indig- 
nantly : 

“See him! Great Scott! No. If he hap- 
pens to appear in the office, I have to associate 
with him ; but, thank Heaven ! outside of that 
I move in circles where he cannot come.” 

And yet the first thing I have been taught to 
believe is that money was everything in Amer- 
ica! 


AMERICAN POLITICS 




II 


AMERICAN POLITICS 

T HAVE been watching machinery in repose 
A after reading about machinery in action. 

An excellent gentleman, who bears a name 
honored in the magazine, writes, much as 
Disraeli orated, of “the sublime instincts of an 
ancient people,” the certainty with which they 
can be trusted to manage their own affairs in 
their own way, and the speed with which they 
are making for all sorts of desirable goals. 
This he called a statement or purview of Amer- 
ican politics. 

I went almost directly afterward to a saloon 
where gentlemen interested in ward politics 
nightly congregate. They were not pretty per- 
sons. Some of them were bloated, and they all 
swore cheerfully till the heavy gold watch- 
chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell 
again ; but they talked over their liquor as men 
who had power and unquestioned access to 
places of trust and profit. 

The magazine writer discussed theories of 

369 


370 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


government; these men the practice. They 
had been there. They knew all about it. They 
banged their fists on the table and spoke of 
political “pulls,” the vending of votes, and so 
forth. Theirs was not the talk of village bab- 
blers reconstructing the affairs of the nation, 
but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting for 
spoil, and thoroughly understanding the best 
methods of reaching it. 

I listened long and intently to speech I could 
not understand — or but in spots. 

It was the speech of business, however. I 
had sense enough to know that, and to do my 
laughing outside the door. 

Then I began to understand why my pleas- 
ant and well-educated hosts in San Francisco 
spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of 
citizenship as voting and taking an interest in 
the distribution of offices. Scores of men have 
told me, without false pride, that they would 
as soon concern themselves with the public 
affairs of the city or state as rake muck with a 
steam-shovel. It may be that their lofty dis- 
dain covers selfishness, but I should be very 
sorry habitually to meet the fat gentlemen with 
shiny top-hats and plump cigars in whose so- 
ciety I have been spending the evening. 

Read about politics as the cultured writer of 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


371 


the magazine regards ’em, and then, and not 
till then, pay your respects to the gentlemen 
who run the grimy reality. 

I’m sick of interviewing night editors who 
lean their chair against the wall, and, in re- 
sponse to my demand for the record of a 
prominent citizen, answer: “Well, you see, he 
began by keeping a saloon,” etc. I prefer to 
believe that my informants are treating me as 
in the old sinful days in India I was used to 
treat the wondering globe-trotter. They de- 
clare that they speak the truth, and the news 
of dog politics lately vouchsafed to me in grog- 
geries inclines me to believe, but I won’t. The 
people are much too nice to slangander as reck- 
lessly as I have been doing. 

Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about 
eight American maidens — all perfectly delight- 
ful till the next one comes into the room. 

O-Toyo was a darling, but she lacked sev- 
eral things — conversation for one. You can- 
not live on giggles. She shall remain unmar- 
ried at Nagasaki, while I roast a battered heart 
before the shrine of a big Kentucky blonde, 
who had for a nurse when she was little a 
negro “mammy.” 

By consequence she has welded on Califor- 
nia beauty, Paris dresses, Eastern culture, Eu- 


372 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


rope trips, and wild Western originality, the 
queer, dreamy superstitions of the quarters, 
and the result is soul-shattering. And she is 
but one of many stars. 

Item, a maiden, who believes in education 
and possesses it, with a few hundred thousand 
dollars to boot and a taste for slumming. 

Item, the leader of a sort of informal salon 
where girls congregate, read papers, and dar- 
ingly discuss metaphysical problems and candy 
— a sloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden 
she. 

Item, a very small maiden, absolutely with- 
out reverence, who can in one swift sentence 
trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen 
young men. 

Item, a millionairess, burdened with her 
money, lonely, caustic, with a tongue keen as a 
sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up 
to the rock of her vast possessions. 

Item, a typewriter maiden earning her own 
bread in this big city, because she doesn’t think 
a girl ought to be a burden on her parents, who 
quotes Theophile Gautier and moves through 
the world manfully, much respected for all her 
twenty inexperienced summers. 

Item, a woman from cloud-land who has no 
history in the past or future, but is discreetly 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


373 


of the present, and strives for the confidences 
of male humanity on the grounds of “sym- 
pathy” (methinks this is not altogether a new 
type). 

Item, a girl in a “dive,” blessed with a Greek 
head and eyes, that seem to speak all that is 
best and sweetest in the world. But woe is 
me! She has no ideas in this world or the 
next beyond the consumption of beer (a com- 
mission on each bottle), and protests that she 
sings the songs allotted to her nightly without 
more than the vaguest notion of their meaning. 

Sweet and comely are the maidens of 
Devonshire; delicate and of gracious seeming 
those who live in the pleasant places of Lon- 
don; fascinating for all their demureness the 
damsels of France, clinging closely to their 
mothers, with large eyes wondering at the 
wicked world; excellent in her own place and 
to those who understand her is the Anglo-In- 
dian “spin” in her second season; but the girls 
of America are above and beyond them all. 
They are clever, they can talk — yea, it is said 
that they think. Certainly they have an ap- 
pearance of so doing which is delightfully de- 
ceptive. 

They are original, and regard you between 
the brows with unabashed eyes as a sister 


374 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


might look at her brother. They are in- 
structed, too, in the folly and vanity of the 
male mind, for they have associated with “the 
boys” from babyhood, and can discerningly 
minister to both vices or pleasantly snub the 
possessor. They possess, moreover, a life 
among themselves, independent of any mascu- 
line associations. They have societies and 
clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the 
guests are girls. They are self-possessed, 
without parting with any tenderness that is 
their sex-right ; they understand ; they can take 
care of themselves; they are superbly inde- 
pendent. When you ask them what makes 
them so charming, they say: 

“It is because we are better educated than 
your girls, and — and we are more sensible in 
regard to men. We have good times all 
round, but we aren’t taught to regard every 
man as a possible husband. Nor is he expected 
to marry the first girl he calls on regularly.” 

Yes, they have good times, their freedom is 
large, and they do not abuse it. They can go 
driving with young men and receive visits 
from young men to an extent that would make 
an English mother wink with horror, and 
neither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond 
the enjoyment of a good time. As certain, 
also, of their own poets have said 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


375 


“Man is fire and woman is tow, 

And the devil he comes and begins to blow.” 

In America the tow is soaked in a solution 
that makes it fire-proof, in absolute liberty and 
large knowledge; consequently, accidents do 
not exceed the regular percentage arranged by 
the devil for each class and climate under the 
skies. 

But the freedom of the young girl has its 
drawbacks. She is — I say it with all reluctance 
— irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to 
the buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She 
talks flippantly to her parents and men old 
enough to be her grandfather. She has a pre- 
scriptive right to the society of the man who 
arrives. The parents admit it. 

This is sometimes embarrassing, especially 
when you call on a man and his wife for the 
sake of information — the one being a merchant 
of varied knowledge, the other a woman of the 
world. In five minutes your host has vanished. 
In another five his wife has followed him, and 
you are left alone with a very charming 
maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the person 
you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, 
but you leave with the very strong impression 
of a wasted morning. This has been my ex- 
perience once or twice. I have even said as 
pointedly as I dared to a man : 


376 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


“I came to see you.” 

“ You’d better see me in my office, then. 
The house belongs to my women folk — to my 
daughter, that is to say.” 

He spoke the truth. The American of 
wealth is owned by his family. They exploit 
him for bullion. The women get the ha’pence, 
the kicks are all his own. Nothing is too good 
for an American’s daughter (I speak here 
of the moneyed classes). 

The girls take every gift as a matter of 
course, and yet they develop greatly when a 
catastrophe arrives and the man of many mil- 
lions goes up or goes down, and his daughters 
take to stenography or typewriting. I have 
heard many tales of heroism from the lips of 
girls who counted the principals among their 
friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, 
or Sadie, gave up their maid, their carriages 
and candy, and with a No. 2 Remington and a 
stout heart set about earning their daily bread. 

“And did I drop her from the list of my 
friends? No, sir,” said a scarlet-lipped vision 
in white lace; “that might happen to us any 
day.” 

It may be this sense of possible disaster in 
the air that makes San Francisco society go 
with so captivating a rush and whirl. Reck- 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


377 


lessness is in the air. I can’t explain where it 
comes from, but there it is. The roaring winds 
of the Pacific make you drunk to begin with. 
The aggressive luxury on all sides helps out 
the intoxication, and you spin forever “down 
the ringing grooves of change” (there is no 
small change, by the way, west of the Rockies) 
as long as money lasts. They make greatly 
and they spend lavishly ; not only the rich, but 
the artisans, who pay nearly five pounds for a 
suit of clothes, and for other luxuries in pro- 
portion. 

The young men rejoice in the days of their 
youth. They gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize- 
fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other 
in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they 
break themselves over horse-flesh and other 
things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At 
twenty they are experienced in business, em- 
bark in vast enterprises, take partners as ex- 
perienced as themselves, and go to pieces with 
as much splendor as their neighbors. Remem- 
ber that the men who stocked California in the 
fifties were physically, and, as far as regards 
certain tough virtues, the pick of the earth. 
The inept and the weakly died en route , or 
went under in the days of construction. To 
this nucleus were added all the races of the 


378 AMERICAN POLITICS 


Continent — French, Italian, German, and, of 
course, the Jew. 

The result you can see in the large-boned, 
deep-chested, delicate-handed women, and 
long, elastic, well-built boys. It needs no little 
golden badge swinging from the watch-chain 
to mark the native son of the golden West, the 
countrybred of California. 

Him I loved because he is devoid of fear, 
carries himself like a man, and has a heart as 
big as his boots. I fancy, too, he knows how 
to enjoy the blessings of life that his province 
so abundantly bestows upon him. At least, I 
heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle 
shoulders explaining that a man from Chicago 
could pull the eyeteeth of a Californian in 
business. 

Well, if I lived in fairyland, where cherries 
were as big as plums, plums as big as apples, 
and strawberries of no account, where the pro- 
cession of the fruits of the seasons was like a 
pageant in a Drury Lane pantomime and the 
dry air was wine, I should let business slide 
once in a way and kick up my heels with my 
fellows. The tale of the resources of Cali- 
fornia — vegetable and mineral — is a fairy-tale, 
You can read it in books. You would never 
believe me. 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


379 


All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish 
to beef, may be bought at the lowest prices, and 
the people are consequently well-developed and 
of a high stomach. They demand ten shillings 
for tinkering a jammed lock of a trunk; they 
receive sixteen shillings a day for working as 
carpenters ; they spend many sixpences on very 
bad cigars, which the poorest of them smoke, 
and they go mad over a prize-fight. When 
they disagree they do so fatally, with fire-arms 
in their hands, and on the public streets. I 
was just clear of Mission Street when the 
trouble began between two gentlemen, one of 
whom perforated the other. 

When a policeman, whose name I do not 
recollect, “fatally shot Ed Hearney” for at- 
tempting to escape arrest, I was in the next 
street. For these things I am thankful. It is 
enough to travel with a policeman in a tram- 
car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he 
sits down, to catch sight of a loaded revolver. 
It is enough to know that fifty per cent, of the 
men in the public saloons carry pistols about 
them. 

The Chinamen waylays his adversary, and 
methodically chops him to pieces with his hat- 
chet. Then the press roars about the brutal 
ferocity of the pagan. 


38 ° 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


The Italian reconstructs his friend with a 
long knife. The press complains of the way- 
wardness of the alien. 

The Irishman and the native Californian in 
their hours of discontent use the revolver, not 
once, but six times. The press records the fact, 
and asks in the next column whether the world 
can parallel the progress of San Francisco. 
The American who loves his country will tell 
you that this sort of thing is confined to the 
lower classes. Just at present an ex- judge who 
was sent to jail by another judge (upon my 
word I cannot tell whether these titles mean 
anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance 
against his enemy. The papers have inter- 
viewed both parties, and confidently expect a 
fatal issue. 

Now, let me draw breath and curse the 
negro waiter, and through him the negro in 
service generally. He has been made a citizen 
with a vote, consequently both political parties 
play with him. But that is neither here nor 
there. He will commit in one meal every 
betise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is 
capable of, and he will continue to repeat those 
faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, un- 
comprehending, bungle-fisted fool as any mem- 
sahib in the East ever took into her establish- 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


381 


ment. But he is according to law a free and 
independent citizen — consequently above re- 
proof or criticism. He, and he alone, in this 
insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman 
doesn’t count). 

He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the 
place and draw the pay. Now, God and his 
father’s fate made him intellectually inferior to 
the Oriental. He insists on pretending that he 
serves tables by accident — as a sort of amuse- 
ment. He wishes you to understand this little 
fact. You wish to eat your meals, and, if pos- 
sible, to have them properly served. He is a 
big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into 
one. 

A colored gentleman who insisted on getting 
me pie when I wanted something else, demand- 
ed information about India. I gave him some 
facts about wages. 

“Oh, hell !” said he, cheerfully, “that 
wouldn’t keep me in cigars for a month.” 

Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. 
Later he took it upon himself to pity the na- 
tives of India. “Heathens,” he called them — 
this woolly one, whose race has been the butt 
of every comedy on the native stage since the 
beginning. And I turned and saw by the head 
upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man 


382 AMERICAN POLITICS 


if there be any truth in ethnological castes. 
He did his thinking in English, but he was a 
Yoruba negro, and the race type had remained 
the same throughout his generations. And the 
room was full of other races — some that looked 
exactly like Gallas (but the trade was never 
recruited from that side of Africa), some 
duplicates of Cameroon heads, and some Kroo- 
men, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress. 

The American does not consider little mat- 
ters of descent, though by this time he ought 
to know all about “damnable heredity.” As a 
general rule he keeps himself very far from the 
negro, and says things about him that are not 
pretty. There are six million negroes, more or 
less, in the States, and they are increasing. 
The American, once having made them citi- 
zens, cannot unmake them. He says, in his 
newspapers, they ought to be elevated by ed- 
ucation. He is trying this, but it is likely to be 
a long job, because black blood is much more 
adhesive than white, and throws back with 
annoying persistence. 

When the negro gets religion he returns 
directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of 
his people. Just now a wave of religion is 
sweeping over some of the Southern States. 

Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


383 


have appeared, and several human sacrifices 
have been offered up to these incarnations. 
The Daniel managed to get three young men, 
who he insisted were Shadrach, Meshach, and 
Abednego, to walk into a blast furnace, 
guaranteeing non-combustion. They did not 
return. I have seen nothing of this kind, but I 
have attended a negro church. They pray, or 
are caused to pray by themselves in this coun- 
try. The congregation were moved by the 
spirit to groans and tears, and one of them 
danced up the aisle to the mourners’ bench. 
The motive may have been genuine. The 
movements of the shaken body were those of 
a Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see at Aden 
on the coal-boats, and even as I watched the 
people, the links that bound them to the white 
man snapped one by one, and I saw before me 
the hiibshi (woolly hair) praying to a God he 
did not understand. Those neatly dressed folk 
on the benches, and the grey-headed elder by 
the window, were savages, neither more nor 
less. 

What will the American do with the negro ? 
The South will not consort with him. In 
some States miscegenation is a penal offence. 
The North is every year less and less in need of 
his services. 


384 AMERICAN POLITICS 


And he will not disappear. He will con- 
tinue as a problem. His friends will urge that 
he is as good as the white man. His enemies 
— well, you can guess what his enemies will do 
from a little incident that followed on a recent 
appointment by the President. He made a 
negro an assistant in a post office where — think 
of it! — he had to work at the next desk to a 
white girl, the daughter of a Colonel, one of 
the first families of Georgia’s modern chivalry, 
and all the weary, weary rest of it. The 
Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or 
burned some one in effigy. Perhaps it was the 
President, and perhaps it was the negro — but 
the principal remains the same. They said it 
was an insult. It is not good to be a negro in 
the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

But this is nothing to do with San Fran- 
cisco and her merry maidens, her strong, 
swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and 
pride. They bore me to a banquet in honor of 
a brave lieutenant — Carlin, of the “Vandalia” 
— who stuck by his ship in the great cyclone 
at Apia and comported himself as an officer 
should. On that occasion — ’twas at the 
Bohemian Club — I heard oratory with the 
roundest of o’s, and devoured a dinner the 
memory of which will descend with me into the 
hungry grave. 


AMERICAN POLITICS 385 


There were about forty speeches delivered, 
and not one of them was average or ordinary. 
It was my first introduction to the American 
eagle screaming for all it was worth. The 
lieutenant's heroism served as a peg from 
which the silver-tongued ones turned them- 
selves loose and kicked. 

They ransacked the clouds of sunset, the 
thunderbolts of heaven, the deeps of hell, and 
the splendor of the resurrection for tropes and 
metaphors, and hurled the result at the head 
of the guest of the evening. 

Never since the morning stars sung together 
for joy, I learned, had an amazed creation wit- 
nessed such superhuman bravery as that dis- 
played by the American navy in the Samoa 
cyclone. Till earth rotted in the phosphores- 
cent star-and-stripe slime of a decayed uni- 
verse, that godlike gallantry would not be for- 
gotten. I grieve that I cannot give the exact 
words. My attempt at reproducing their spirit 
is pale and inadequate. I sat bewildered on a 
coruscating Niagara of blatherumskite. It was 
magnificent — it was stupendous — and I was 
conscious of a wicked desire to hide my face in 
a napkin and grin. Then according to rule, 
they produced their dead, and across the snowy 
table-cloths dragged the corpse of every man 


386 AMERICAN POLITICS 


slain in the Civil War, and hurled defiance at 
“our natural enemy” (England, so please 
you), “with her chain of fortresses across the 
world.” Thereafter they glorified their na- 
tion afresh from the beginning, in case any 
detail should have been overlooked, and that 
made me uncomfortable for their sakes. How 
in the world can a white man, a sahib, of our 
blood, stand up and plaster praise on his own 
country? He can think as highly as he likes, 
but this open-mouthed vehemence of adoration 
struck me almost as indelicate. My hosts 
talked for rather more than three hours, and at 
the end seemed ready for three hours more. 

But when the lieutenant — such a big, brave, 
gentle giant — rose to his feet, he delivered 
what seemed to me as the speech of the even- 
ing. I remember nearly the whole of it, and it 
ran something in this way : 

“Gentlemen — It’s very good of you to give 
me this dinner and tell me all these pretty 
things, but what I want you to understand — 
the fact is, what we want and what we ought 
to get at once, is a navy — more ships — lots of 
’em” — 

Then we howled the top of the roof off, and 
I for one fell in love with Carlin on the spot. 
Wallah! He was a man. 


AMERICAN POLITICS 387 


The prince among merchants bid me take 
no heed to the warlike sentiments of some of 
the old generals. 

“The sky-rockets are thrown in for effect,” 
quoth he, “and whenever we get on our hind 
legs we always express a desire to chaw up 
England. It’s a sort of family affair.” 

And, indeed, when you come to think of it, 
there is no other country for the American 
public speaker to trample upon. 

France has Germany; we have Russia; for 
Italy Austria is provided; and the humblest 
Pathan possesses an ancestral enemy. 

Only America stands out of the racket, and 
therefore to be in fashion makes a sand-bag 
of the mother country, and hangs her when 
occasion requires. 

“The chain of fortresses” man, a fascinating 
talker, explained to me after the affair that he 
was compelled to blow off steam. Everybody 
expected it. 

When we had chanted “The Star Spangled 
Banner” not more than eight times, we ad- 
journed. America is a very great country, but 
it is not yet heaven, with electric lights and 
plush fittings, as the speakers professed to be- 
lieve. My listening mind went back to the 
politicians in the saloon, who wasted no time 


388 AMERICAN POLITICS 


in talking about freedom, but quietly made ar- 
rangements to impose their will on the citizens. 

“The judge is a great man, but give thy 
presents to the clerk, ,, as the proverb saith. 

And what more remains to tell? I cannot 
write connectedly, because I am in love with 
all those girls aforesaid, and some others who 
do not appear in the invoice. The typewriter 
is an institution of which the comic papers 
make much capital, but she is vastly con- 
venient. She and a companion rent a room in 
a business quarter, and, aided by a typewriting 
machine, copy MSS. at the rate of six annas a 
page. Only a woman can operate a typewrit- 
ing machine, because she has served apprentice- 
ship to the sewing machine. She can earn as 
much as one hundred dollars a month, and pro- 
fesses to regard this form of bread-winning as 
her natural destiny. But, oh! how she hates 
it in her heart of hearts ! When I had got over 
the surprise of doing business with and trying 
to give orders to a young woman of coldly, 
clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmed 
spectacles, I made inquiries concerning the 
pleasures of this independence. They liked it 
— indeed they did. ’Twas the natural fate of 
almost all girls — the recognized custom in 
America — and I was a barbarian not to see it 
in that light. 


AMERICAN POLITICS 389 

“Well, and after ?” said I. “What hap- 
pens ?” 

“We work for our bread.” 

“And then what do you expect?” 

“Then we shall work for our bread.” 

“Till you die?” 

“Ye-es — unless” — 

“Unless what? This is your business, you 
know. A man works until he dies.” 

“So shall we” — this without enthusiasm — 
“I suppose.” 

Said the partner in the firm audaciously : 

“Sometimes we marry our employers — at 
least, that’s what the newspapers say.” 

The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys 
of the machine at once. “Yet I don’t care. I 
hate it — I hate it — I hate it — and you needn’t 
look so !” 

The senior partner was regarding the rebel 
with grave-eyed reproach. 

“I thought you did,” said I. “I don’t sup- 
pose American girls are much different from 
English ones in instinct.” 

“Isn’t it Theophile Gautier who says that 
the only differences between country and coun- 
try lie in the slang and the uniform of the 
police ?” 

Now, in the name of all the gods at once, 


390 


AMERICAN POLITICS 


what is one to say to a young lady (who in 
England would be a person) who earns her 
own bread, and very naturally hates the em- 
ploy, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at 
your head? That one falls in love with her 
goes without saying, but that is not enough. 

A mission should be established. 


AMERICAN SALMON 








Ill 


AMERICAN SALMON 

The race is neither to the swift nor the battle to the 
strong; but time and chance cometh to all. 

T HAVE lived! 

The American Continent may now sink 
under the sea, for I have taken the best that it 
yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, 
nor real estate. 

Hear now, gentlemen of the Punjab Fishing 
Club, who whip the reaches of the Tavi, and 
you who painfully import trout to Octamund, 
and I will tell you how old man California 
and I went fishing, and you shall envy. 

We returned from The Dalles to Portland 
by the way we had come, the steamer stopping 
en route to pick up a night’s catch of one of 
the salmon wheels on the river, and to deliver 
it at a cannery down-stream. 

When the proprietor of the wheel announced 
that his take was two thousand two hundred 
393 


394 


AMERICAN SALMON 


and thirty pounds weight of fish, “and not a 
heavy catch neither,” I thought he lied. But 
he sent the boxes aboard, and I counted the 
salmon by the hundred — huge fifty-pounders 
hardly dead, scores of twenty and thirty 
pounders, and a host of smaller fish. They 
were all Chenook salmon, as distinguished 
from the “steel head” and the “silver side.” 
That is to say, they were royal salmon, and 
California and I dropped a tear over them, as 
monarchs who deserved a better fate; but the 
lust of slaughter entered into our souls, and 
we talked fish and forgot the mountain scenery 
that -had so moved us a day before. 

The steamer halted at a rude wooden ware- 
house built on piles in a lonely reach of the 
river, and sent in the fish. I followed them up 
a scale-strewn, fishy incline that led to the can- 
nery. The crazy building was quivering with 
the machinery on its floors, and a glittering 
bank of tin scraps twenty feet high showed 
where the waste was thrown after the cans had 
been punched. 

Only Chinamen were employed on the work, 
and they looked like blood-besmeared yellow 
devils as they crossed the rifts of sunlight that 
lay upon the floor. When our consignment ar- 
rived, the rough wooden boxes broke of them- 


AMERICAN SALMON 


395 


selves as they were dumped down under a jet 
of water, and the salmon burst out In a stream 
of quicksilver. A Chinaman jerked up a 
twenty-pounder, beheaded and detailed it with 
two swift strokes of a knife, flicked out its in- 
ternal arrangements with a third, and cast it 
into a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish 
leaped from under his hands as though they 
were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled 
them from the vat and thrust them under a 
thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, 
hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit for 
the can. 

More Chinamen, with yellow, crooked fin- 
gers, jammed the stuff into the cans, which slid 
down some marvelous machine forthwith, 
soldering their own tops as they passed. Each 
can was hastily tested for flaws, and then sunk 
with a hundred companions into a vat of boil- 
ing water, there to be half cooked for a few 
minutes. The cans bulged slightly after the 
operation, and were therefore slidden along by 
the trolleyful to men with needles and solder- 
ing-irons who vented them and soldered the 
aperture. Except for the label, the “Finest 
Columbia Salmon” was ready for the market. 
I was impressed not so much with the speed 
of the manufacture as the character of the fac- 


39 ^ 


AMERICAN SALMON 


tory. Inside, on a floor ninety by forty, the 
most civilized and murderous of machinery. 
Outside, three footsteps, the thick-growing 
pines and the immense solitude of the hills. 
Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at 
that place, but I counted two hundred and 
forty finished cans made from the catch of the 
previous night ere I left the slippery, blood- 
stained, scale-spangled, oily floors and the 
offal-smeared Chinamen. 

We reached Portland, California and I cry- 
ing for salmon, and a real-estate man, to whom 
we had been intrusted by an insurance man, 
met us in the street, saying that fifteen miles 
away, across country, we should come upon a 
place called Clackamas, where we might per- 
chance find what we desired. And California, 
his coat-tails flying in the wind, ran to a livery- 
stable and chartered a wagon and team forth- 
with. I could push the wagon about with one 
hand, so light was its structure. The team was 
purely American — that is to say, almost human 
in its intelligence and docility. Some one said 
that the roads were not good on the way to 
Clackamas, and warned us against smashing 
the springs. “Portland,” who had watched the 
preparations, finally reckoned “He’d come 
along, too;” and under heavenly skies we 


AMERICAN SALMON 


397 


three companions of a day set forth, California 
carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, 
and the bystanders overwhelming us with 
directions as to the saw-mills we were to pass, 
the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts 
we were to seek signs from. Half a mile from 
this city of fifty thousand souls we struck (and 
this must be taken literally) a plank road that 
would have been a disgrace to an Irish village. 

Then six miles of macadamized road showed 
us that the team could move. A railway ran 
between us and the banks of the Willamette, 
and another above us through the mountains. 
AH the land was dotted with small townships, 
and the roads were full of farmers in their 
town wagons, bunches of tow-haired, boggle- 
eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind. The 
men generally looked like loafers, but their 
women were all well dressed. 

Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket 
does not, however, consort with hay-wagons. 
Then we struck into the woods along what 
California called a camina reale — a good road 
— and Portland a “fair track.” It wound in 
and out among fire-blackened stumps under 
pine-trees, along the corners of log fences, 
through hollows, which must be hopeless 
marsh in the winter, and up absurd gradients. 


398 


AMERICAN SALMON 


But nowhere throughout its length did I see 
any evidence of road-making. There was a 
track — you couldn’t get off it, and it was all 
you could do to stay on it. The dust lay a 
foot thick in the blind ruts, and under the dust 
we found bits of planking and bundles of 
brushwood that sent the wagon bounding into 
the air. The journey in itself was a delight. 
Sometimes we crashed through bracken ; anon, 
where the blackberries grew rankest, we found 
a lonely little cemetery, the wooden rails all 
awry and the pitiful, stumpy head-stones nod- 
ding drunkenly at the soft green mullions. 
Then, with oaths and the sound of rent under- 
wood, a yoke of mighty bulls would swing 
down a “skid” road, hauling a forty-foot log 
along a rudely made slide. 

A valley full of wheat and cherry-trees suc- 
ceeded, and halting at a house, we bought ten- 
pound weight of lucious black cherries for 
something less than a rupee, and got a drink 
of icy-cold water for nothing, while the un- 
tended team browsed sagaciously by the road- 
side. Once we found a wayside camp of horse- 
dealers lounging by a pool, ready for a sale or 
a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters 
shot down a hill on Indian ponies, their full 
creels banging from the high-pommeled saddle. 


AMERICAN SALMON 


399 


They had been fishing, and were our brethren, 
therefore. We shouted aloud in chorus to 
scare a wild cat ; we squabbled over the reasons 
that had led a snake to cross a road ; we heaved 
bits of bark at a venturesome chipmunk, who 
was really the little grey squirrel of India, and 
had come to call on me ; we lost our way, and 
got the wagon so beautifully fixed on a khud- 
bound road that we had to tie the two hind 
wheels to get it down. 

Above all, California told tales of Nevada 
and Arizona, of lonely nights spent out pros- 
pecting, the slaughter of deer and the chase of 
men, of woman — lovely woman — who is a fire- 
brand in a Western city and leads to the pop- 
ping of pistols, and of the sudden changes and 
chances of Fortune, who delights in making 
the miner or the lumberman a quadruplicate 
millionaire and in “busting” the railroad king. 

That was a day to be remembered, and it 
had only begun when we drew rein at a tiny 
farmhouse on the banks of the Clackamas and 
sought horse feed and lodging, ere we hastened 
to the river that broke over a weir not a quar- 
ter of a mile away. Imagine a stream seventy 
yards broad divided by a pebbly island, run- 
ning over seductive “riffles” and swirling into 
deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes 


400 


AMERICAN SALMON 


to smoke his pipe after meals. Get such a 
stream amid fields of breast-high crops sur- 
rounded by hills of pines, throw in where you 
please quiet water, long-fenced meadows, and 
a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery 
from growing too monotonous, and you will 
get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The 
weir had been erected to pen the Chenook sal- 
mon from going further upstream. We could 
see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score 
in the deep pools, or flying madly against the 
weir and foolishly skinning their noses. They 
were not our prey, for they would not rise at 
a fly, and we knew it. All the same, when one 
made his leap against the weir, and landed on 
the foot-plank with a jar that shook the board 
I was standing on, I would fain have claimed 
him for my own capture. 

Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and 
the whiskey. California sniffed up-stream and 
down-stream, across the racing water, chose 
his ground, and let the gaudy fly drop in the 
tail of a riffle. I was getting my rod together 
when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and 
the yells of California, and three feet of living 
silver leaped into the air far across the water. 
The forces were engaged. 

The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line 


AMERICAN SALMON 


401 


cutting the water like a tide-rip behind him, 
and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. 
What happened thereafter I cannot tell. Cali- 
fornia swore and prayed, and Portland shout- 
ed advice, and I did all three for what appeared 
to be half a day, but was in reality a little over 
a quarter of an hour, and sullenly our fish came 
home with spurts of temper, dashes head on 
and sarabands in the air, but home to the bank 
came he, and the remorseless reel gathered up 
the thread of his life inch by inch. We landed 
him in a little bay, and the spring weight in 
his gorgeous gills checked at eleven and one 
half pounds. Eleven and one half pounds of 
fighting salmon! We danced a war-dance on 
the pebbles, and California caught me round 
the waist in a hug that went near to breaking 
my ribs, while he shouted: 

“Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now 
you catch your fish! Twenty-four years Eve 
waited for this!” 

I went into that icy-cold river and made my 
cast just above the weir, and all but foul- 
hooked a blue-and-black water-snake with a 
coral mouth who coiled herself on a stone and 
hissed maledictions. 

The next cast — ah, the pride of it, the regal 
splendor of it! the thrill that ran down from 


402 


AMERICAN SALMON 


finger-tip to toe! Then the water boiled. He 
broke for the fly and got it. There remained 
enough sense in me to give him all he wanted 
when he jumped not once, but twenty times, 
before the up-stream flight that ran my line out 
to the last half-dozen turns, and I saw the 
nickeled reel-bar glitter under the thinning 
green coils. My thumb was burned deep when 
I strove to stopper the line. 

I did not feel it till later, for my soul was 
out in the dancing weir, praying for him to 
turn ere he took my tackle away. And the 
prayer was heard. As I bowed back, the butt 
of the rod on my left hip-bone and the top 
joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he 
turned and accepted each inch of slack that I 
could by any means get in as a favor from on 
high. There lie several sorts of success in this 
world that taste well in the moment of enjoy- 
ment, but I question whether the stealthy theft 
of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows 
exactly what you are doing and why you are 
doing it is not sweeter than any other victory 
within human scope. Like California’s fish, he 
ran at me head on, and leaped against the line, 
but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty 
pairs of fingers in that hour. The banks and 
the pine-trees danced dizzily round me, but I 



Copyright, 1909, by The Edinburgh Society 




AMERICAN SALMON 


403 


only reeled — reeled as for life — reeled for 
hours, and at the end of the reeling continued 
to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool. 
California was further up the reach, and with 
the corner of my eye I could see him casting 
with long casts and much skill. Then he 
struck, and my fish broke for the weir in the 
same instant, and down the reach we came, 
California and I, reel answering reel even as 
the morning stars sing together. 

The first wild enthusiasm of capture had 
died away. We were both at work now in 
deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to 
stall off a down-stream rush for shaggy water 
just above the weir, and at the same time to 
get the fish into the shallow bay down-stream 
that gave the best practicable landing. Port- 
land bid us both be of good heart, and volun- 
teered to take the rod from my hands. 

I would rather have died among the pebbles 
than surrender my right to play and land a 
salmon, weight unknown, with an eight-ounce 
rod. I heard California, at my ear, it seemed, 
gasping: “He’s a fighter from Fightersville, 
sure !” as his fish made a fresh break across the 
stream. I saw Portland fall off a log fence, 
break the overhanging bank, and clatter down 
to the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and 


404 


AMERICAN SALMON 


I dropped on a log to rest for a moment. As 
I drew breath the weary hands slackened their 
hold, and I forgot to give him the butt. 

A wild scutter in the water, a plunge, and 
a break for the head-waters of the Clackamas 
was my reward, and the weary toil of reeling 
in with one eye under the water and the other 
on the top joint of the rod was renewed. 
Worst of all, I was blocking California’s path 
to the little landing bay aforesaid, and he had 
to halt and tire his prize where he was. 

“The father of all the salmon !” he shouted. 
“For the love of Heaven, get your trout to 
bank, Johnny Bull!” 

But I could do no more. Even the insult 
failed to move me. The rest of the game was 
with the salmon. He suffered himself to be 
drawn, skipping with pretended delight at 
getting to the haven where I would fain bring 
him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water 
under his ponderous belly than he backed like 
a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told 
me that my labor was in vain. A dozen times, 
at least, this happened ere the line hinted he 
had given up the battle and would be towed 
in. He was towed. The landing-net was use- 
less for one of his size, and I would not have 
him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and 


AMERICAN SALMON 


405 


heaved him out with respectful hand under 
the gill, for which kindness he battered me 
about the legs with his tail, and I felt the 
strength of him and was proud. California 
had taken my place in the shallows, his fish 
hard held. I was up the bank lying full length 
on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in 
company with my first salmon caught, played 
and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands 
were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with 
sweat, spangled like a harlequin with scales, 
water from my waist down, nose peeled by the 
sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately 
happy. 

The beauty, the darling, the daisy, my Sal- 
mon Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and I 
had been seven-and-thirty minutes bringing 
him to bank ! He had been lightly hooked on 
the angle of the right jaw, and the hook had 
not wearied him. That hour I sat among 
princes and crowned heads greater than them 
all. Below the bank we heard California 
scuffling with his salmon and swearing Spanish 
oaths. Portland and I assisted at the capture, 
and the fish dragged the spring balance out by 
the roots. It was only constructed to weigh 
up to fifteen pounds. We stretched the three 
fish on the grass — the eleven and a half, the 


40 6 


AMERICAN SALMON 


twelve and fifteen pounder — and we gave an 
oath that all who came after should merely be 
weighed and put back again. 

How shall I tell the glories of that day so 
that you may be interested ? Again and again 
did California and I prance down that reach to 
the little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and 
land him in the shallows. Then Portland took 
my rod and caught some ten-pounders, and my 
spoon was carried away by an unknown levia- 
than. Each fish, for the merits of the three 
that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked 
on the balance and flung back. Portland re- 
corded the weight in a pocket-book, for he was 
a real-estate man. Each fish fought for all he 
was worth, and none more savagely than the 
smallest, a game little six-pounder. At the end 
of six hours we added up the list. Read it. 
Total: Sixteen fish; aggregate weight, one 
hundred and forty pounds. The score in detail 
runs something like this — it is only interesting 
to those concerned : fifteen, eleven and a half, 
twelve, ten, nine and three quarters, eight, and 
so forth; as I have said, nothing under six 
pounds, and three ten-pounders. 

Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our 
rods — it was glory enough for all time — and 
returned weeping in each other’s arms, weep- 


AMERICAN SALMON 


407 


ing tears of pure joy, to that simple, bare- 
legged family in the packing-case house by the 
waterside. 

The old farmer recollected days and nights 
of fierce warfare with the Indians “way back 
in the fifties,” when every ripple of the Colum- 
bia River and her tributaries hid covert dan- 
ger. God had dowered him with a queer, 
crooked gift of expression and a fierce anxiety 
for the welfare of his two little sons — tanned 
and reserved children, who attended school 
daily and spoke good English in a strange 
tongue. 

His wife was an austere woman, who had 
once been kindly, and perhaps handsome. 

Very many years of toil had taken the elas- 
ticity out of step and voice. She looked for 
nothing better than everlasting work — the 
chafing detail of housework — and then a grave 
somewhere up the hill among the blackberries 
and the pines. But in her grim way she sym- 
pathized with her eldest daughter, a small and 
silent maiden of eighteen, who had thoughts 
very far from the meals she tended and the 
pans she scoured. 

We stumbled into the household at a crisis, 
and there was a deal of downright humanity in 
that same. A bad, wicked dressmaker had 


408 


AMERICAN SALMON 


promised the maiden a dress in time for a to- 
morrow’s railway journey, and though the 
barefooted Gregory, who stood in very whole- 
some awe of his sister, had scoured the woods 
on a pony in search, that dress never arrived. 
So, with sorrow in her heart and a hundred 
Sister-Anne glances up the road, she waited 
upon the strangers and, I doubt not, cursed 
them for the wants that stood between her and 
her need for tears. It was a genuine little 
tragedy. The mother, in a heavy, passionless 
voice, rebuked her impatience, yet sat up far 
into the night, bowed over a heap of sewing 
for the daughter’s benefit. 

These things I beheld in the long marigold- 
scented twilight and whispering night, loafing 
round the little house with California, who un- 
folded himself like a lotus to the moon, or in 
the little boarded bunk that was our bedroom, 
swapping tales with Portland and the old man. 

Most of the yarns began in this way : 

“Red Larry was a bull-puncher back of Lone 
County, Montana,” or “There was a man rid- 
ing the trail met a jack-rabbit sitting in a cac- 
tus,” or “ ’Bout the time of the San Diego land 
boom, a woman from Monterey,” etc. 

You can try to piece out for yourselves 
what sort of stories they were. 


THE YELLOWSTONE 












IV 


THE YELLOWSTONE 

O NCE upon a time there was a carter who 
brought his team and a friend into the 
Yellowstone Park without due thought. Pres- 
ently they came upon a few of the natural 
beauties of the place, and that carter turned 
his team into his friend's team, howling: 

“Get out o’ this, Jim. All hell’s alight under 
our noses!” 

And they called the place Hell’s Half-Acre 
to this day to witness if the carter lied. 

We, too, the old lady from Chicago, her 
husband, Tom, and the good little mares, came 
to Hell’s Half-Acre, which is about sixty acres 
in extent, and when Tow said : 

“Would you like to drive over it?” 

We said : 

“Certainly not, and if you do we shall re- 
port you to the park authorities.” 

There was a plain, blistered, peeled, and 
abominable, and it was given over to the sport- 
411 


412 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


ings and spoutings of devils who threw mud, 
and steam, and dirt at each other with whoops, 
and halloos, and bellowing curses. 

The places smelled of the refuse of the pit, 
and that odor mixed with the clean, whole- 
some aroma of the pines in our nostrils 
throughout the day. 

This Yellowstone Park is laid out like Ollen- 
dorf, in exercises of progressive difficulty. 
Hell’s Half-Acre was a prelude to ten or twelve 
miles of geyser formation. 

We passed hot streams boiling in the forest; 
saw whiffs of steam beyond these, and yet 
other whiffs breaking through the misty green 
hills in the far distance; we trampled on sul- 
phur in crystals, and sniffed things much worse 
than any sulphur which is known to the upper 
world; and so journeying, bewildered with the 
novelty, came upon a really park-like place 
where Tom suggested we should get out and 
play with the geysers on foot. 

Imagine mighty green fields splattered with 
lime-beds, all the flowers of the summer grow- 
ing up to the very edge of the lime. That was 
our first glimpse of the geyser basins. 

The buggy had pulled up close to a rough, 
broken, blistered cone of spelter stuff between 
ten and twenty feet high. There was trouble 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


413 


in that place — moaning, splashing, gurgling, 
and the clank of machinery. A spurt of boiling 
water jumped into the air, and a wash of water 
followed. 

I removed swiftly. The old lady from Chi- 
cago shrieked. “What a wicked waste !” said 
her husband. 

I think they call it the Riverside Geyser. Its 
spout was torn and ragged like the mouth of a 
gun when a shell has burst there. It grumbled 
madly for a moment or two, and then was 
still. I crept over the steaming lime — it was 
the burning marl on which Satan lay — and 
looked fearfully down its mouth. You should 
never look a gift geyser in the mouth. 

I beheld a horrible, slippery, slimy funnel 
with water rising and falling ten feet at a 
time. Then the water rose to lip level with a 
rush, and an infernal bubbling troubled this 
Devil's Bethesda before the sullen heave of the 
crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made 
me run. 

Mark the nature of the human soul ! I had 
begun with awe, not to say terror, for this was 
my first experience of such things. I stepped 
back from the banks of the Riverside Geyser, 
saying : 

“Pooh! Is that all it can do?" 


414 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


Yet for aught I knew, the whole thing might 
have blown up at a minute’s notice, she, he, or 
it being an arrangement of uncertain temper. 

We drifted on, up that miraculous valley. 
On either side of us were hills from a thousand 
to fifteen hundred feet high, wooded from 
crest to heel. As far as the eye could range 
forward were the columns of steam in the air, 
misshapen lumps of lime, mist-like preadamite 
monsters, still pools of turquoise-blue, stretches 
of blue corn-flowers, a river that coiled on it- 
self twenty times, pointed bowlders of strange 
colors, and ridges of glaring, staring white. 

A moon-faced trooper of German extraction 
— never was park so carefully patrolled — came 
up to inform us that as yet we had not seen any 
of the real geysers; that they were all a mile 
or so up the valley, and tastefully scattered 
round the hotel in which we would rest for the 
night. 

America is a free country, but the citizens 
look down on the soldier. I had to entertain 
that trooper. The old lady from Chicago 
would have none of him; so we loafed along 
together, now across half-rotten pine logs sunk 
in swampy ground, anon over the ringing 
geyser formation, then pounding through 
river-sand or brushing knee-deep through long 
grass. 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


415 


“And why did you enlist?” said I. 

The moon-faced one’s face began to work. 

I thought he would have a fit, but he told me a 
story instead — such a nice tale of a naughty 
little girl who wrote pretty love letters to two 
men at once. She was a simple village wife, 
but a wicked “family novelette” countess 
couldn’t have accomplished her ends better. 
She drove one man nearly wild with the pretty 
little treachery, and the other man abandoned 
her and came West to forget the trickery. 

Moon-face was that man. 

We rounded and limped over a low spur of 
hill, and came out upon a field of aching, 
snowy lime rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, 
riven with rents, and diamonds, and stars, 
stretching for more than half a mile in every 
direction. 

On this place of despair lay most of the big, 
bad geysers who know when there is trouble in 
Krakatoa, who tell the pines when there is a 
cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who are 
exhibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful 
names. 

The first mound that I encountered belonged 
to a goblin who was splashing in his tub. 

I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his 
shoulders, gasp, crack his joints, and rub him- 


416 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


self down with a towel; then he let the water 
out of the bath, as a thoughtful man should, 
and it all sunk down out of sight till another 
goblin arrived. 

So we looked and we wondered at the Bee- 
hive, whose mouth is built up exactly like a 
hive, at the Turban (which is not in the least 
like a turban), and at many, many other gey- 
sers, hot holes, and springs. Some of them 
rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmod- 
ically, and others lay dead still in sheets of 
sapphire and beryl. 

Would you believe that even these terrible 
creatures have to be guarded by the troopers to 
prevent the irreverent Americans from chip- 
ping the cones to pieces, or, worse still, making 
the geyser sick ? If you take a small barrel full 
of soft soap and drop it down a geyser’s 
mouth, that geyser will presently be forced to 
lay all before you, and for days afterward will 
be of an irritated and inconstant stomach. 

When they told me the tale I was filled with 
sympathy. Now I wish that I had had soft- 
soap and tried the experiment on some lonely 
little beast far away in the woods. It sounds 
so probable and so human. 

Yet he would be a bold man who would ad- 
minister emetics to the Giantess. She is flat- 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


417 


lipped, having no mouth ; she looks like a pool, 
fifty feet long and thirty wide, and there is no 
ornamentation about her. At irregular inter- 
vals she speaks and sends up a volume of 
water over two hundred feet high to begin 
with, then she is angry for a day and a half — 
sometimes for two days. 

Owing to her peculiarity of going mad in 
the night, not many people have seen the 
Giantess at her finest; but the clamor of her 
unrest, men say, shakes the wooden hotel, and 
echoes like thunder among the hills. 

The congregation returned to the hotel to 
put down their impressions in diaries and note- 
books, which they wrote up ostentatiously in 
the verandas. It was a sweltering hot day, 
albeit we stood somewhat higher than the level 
of Simla, and I left that raw pine creaking 
caravansary for the cool shade of a clump of 
pines between whose trunks glimmered tents. 

A batch of United States troopers came 
down the road and flung themselves across the 
country into their rough lines. The Melican 
cavalryman can ride, though he keeps his ac- 
coutrements pig-fashion and his horse cow- 
fashion. 

I was free of that camp in five minutes — free 
to play with the heavy, lumpy carbines, have 


4i8 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


the saddles stripped, and punch the horses 
knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had 
been in the fight with “Wrap-up-his-Tail,” and 
he told me how that great chief, his horse’s tail 
tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of the 
United States Cavalry, challenging all to a 
single combat. But he was slain, and a few of 
his tribe with him. 

“There’s no use in an Indian, anyway,” con- 
cluded my friend. 

A couple of cowboys — real cowboys — 
jingled through the camp amid a shower of 
mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook 
City, I fancy, and I know that they never 
washed. But they were picturesque ruffians 
exceedingly, with long spurs, hooded stirrups, 
slouch hats, fur weather-cloth over their knees, 
and pistol -butts just easy to hand. 

“The cowboy’s goin’ under before long,” 
said my friend. “Soon as the country’s set- 
tled up he’ll have to go. But he’s mighty use- 
ful now. What would we do without the 
cowboy ?” 

“As how?” said I, and the camp laughed. 

“He has the money. We have the skill. He 
comes in winter to play poker at the military 
posts. We play poker — a few. When he’s 
lost his money we make him drunk and let him 
go. Sometimes we get the wrong man.” 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


419 


And he told me a tale of an innocent cow- 
boy who turned up, cleaned out, at an army 
post, and played poker for thirty-six hours. 
But it was the post that was cleaned out when 
that long-haired Caucasian removed himself, 
heavy with everybody’s pay and declining the 
proffered liquor. 

“Noaw,” said the historian, “I don’t play 
with no cowboy unless he’s a little bit drunk 
first.” 

Ere I departed I gathered from more than 
one man the significant fact that up to one 
hundred yards he felt absolutely secure behind 
his revolver. 

“In England, I understand,” quoth the 
limber youth from the South, — “in England a 
man isn’t allowed to play with no firearms. 
He’s got to be taught all that when he enlists. 
I didn’t want much teaching how to shoot 
straight ’fore I served Uncle Sam. And that’s 
just where it is. But you was talking about 
your Horse Guards now?” 

I explained briefly some peculiarities of 
equipment connected with our crackest crack 
cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared. 

“Take ’em over swampy ground. Let ’em 
run around a bit an’ work the starch out of 
’em, an’ then, Almighty, if we wouldn’t plug 
’em at ease I’d eat their horses.” 


420 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


There was a maiden — a very little maiden — 
who had just stepped out of one of James’s 
novels. She owned a delightful mother and an 
equally delightful father — a heavy-eyed, slow- 
voiced man of finance. The parents thought 
that their daughter wanted change. 

She lived in New Hampshire. Accordingly, 
she had dragged them up to Alaska and to the 
Yosemite Valley, and was now returning 
leisurely, via the Yellowstone, just in time for 
the tail-end of the summer season at Saratoga. 

We had met once or twice before in the 
park, and I had been amazed and amused at 
her critical commendation of the wonders that 
she saw. From that very resolute little mouth 
I received a lecture on American literature, the 
nature and inwardness of Washington society, 
the precise value of Cable’s works as compared 
with Uncle Remus Harris, and a few other 
things that had nothing whatever to do with 
geysers, but were altogether pleasant. 

Now, an English maiden who had stumbled 
on a dust-grimed, lime-washed, sun-peeled, 
collarless wanderer come from and going to 
goodness knows where, would, her mother in- 
citing her and her father brandishing his um- 
brella, have regarded him as a dissolute ad- 
venturer — a person to be disregarded. 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


421 


Not so those delightful people from New 
Hampshire. They were good enough to treat 
him — it sounds almost incredible — as a human 
being, possibly respectable, probably not in im- 
mediate need of financial assistance. 

Papa talked pleasantly and to the point. 

The little maiden strove valiantly with the 
accent of her birth and that of her rearing, and 
mamma smiled benignly in the background. 

Balance this with a story of a young English 
idiot I met mooning about inside his high col- 
lar, attended by a valet. He condescended to 
tell me that “you can’t be too careful who you 
talk to in these parts.” And stalked on, fear- 
ing, I suppose, every minute for his social 
chastity. 

That man was a barbarian ( I took occasion 
to tell him so), for he comported himself after 
the manner of the head-hunters and hunted of 
Assam who are at perpetual feud one with an- 
other. 

You will understand that these foolish 
stories are introduced in order to cover the 
fact that this pen cannot describe the glories 
of the Upper Geyser Basin. The evening I 
spent under the lee of the Castle Geyser, sit- 
ting on a log with some troopers and watch- 
ing a baronial keep forty feet high spouting 


422 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


hot water. If the Castle went off first, they 
said the Giantess would be quiet, and vice 
versa , and then they told tales till the moon 
got up and a party of campers in the woods 
gave us all something to eat. 

Then came soft, turfy forest that deadened 
the wheels, and two troopers on detachment 
duty stole noiselessly behind us. One was the 
Wrap-up-his-Tail man, and they talked merrily 
while the half-broken horses bucked about 
among the trees. And so a cavalry escort was 
with us for a mile, till we got to a mighty hill 
all strewn with moss agates, and everybody 
had to jump out and pant in that thin air. But 
how intoxicating it was! The old lady from 
Chicago ducked like an emancipated hen as 
she scuttled about the road, cramming pieces of 
rock into her reticule. She sent me fifty yards 
down the hillside to pick up a piece of broken 
bottle which she insisted was moss agate. 

“I’ve some o’ that at home, an’ they shine. 
Yes, you go get it, young man.” 

As we climbed the long path the road grew 
viler and viler till it became, without disguise, 
the bed of a torrent ; and just when things were 
at their rockiest we nearly fell into a little 
sapphire lake — but never sapphire was so blue 
— called Mary’s Lake; and that between eight 
and nine thousand feet above the sea. 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


423 


Afterward, grass downs, all on a vehement 
slope, so that the buggy, following the new- 
made road, ran on the two off-wheels mostly 
till we dipped head-first into a ford, climbed up 
a cliff, raced along down, dipped again, and 
pulled up disheveled at “Larry’s” for lunch 
and an hour’s rest. 

Then we lay on the grass and laughed with 
sheer bliss of being alive. This have I known 
once in Japan, once on the banks of the Colum- 
bia, what time the salmon came in and Califor- 
nia howled, and once again in the Yellowstone 
by the light of the eyes of the maiden from 
New Hampshire. Four little pools lay at my 
elbow, one was of black water (tepid), one 
clear water (cold), one clear water (hot), 
one red water (boiling). My newly washed 
handkerchief covered them all, and we two 
marveled as children marvel. 

“This evening we shall do the Grand Can- 
yon of the Yellowstone,” said the maiden. 

“Together?” said I; and she said, “Yes.” 

The sun was beginning to sink when we 
heard the roar of falling waters and came to 
a broad river along whose banks we ran. And 
then — I might at a pinch describe the infernal 
regions, but not the other place. The Yellow- 
stone River has occasion to run through a 


424 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


gorge about eight miles long. To get to the 
bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps, one of 
about one hundred and twenty and the other of 
three hundred feet. I investigated the upper 
or lesser fall, which is close to the hotel. 

Up to that time nothing particular happens 
to the Yellowstone — its banks being only 
rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned 
with pines. 

At the falls it comes round a corner, green, 
solid, ribbed with a little foam, and not more 
than thirty yards wide. Then it goes over, 
still green, and rather more solid than before. 
After a minute or two, you, sitting upon a 
rock directly above the drop, begin to under- 
stand that something has occurred; that the 
river has jumped between solid cliff walls, and 
that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides 
of the gorge below is really the outcome of 
great waves. 

And the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do 
not allow the yells to escape. 

That inspection began with curiosity and 
finished in terror, for it seemed that the whole 
world was sliding in chrysolite from under my 
feet. I followed with the others round the cor- 
ner to arrive at the brink of the canyon. We 
had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


425 


to begin with, for the ground rises more than 
the river drops. Stately pine woods fringe 
either lip of the gorge, which is the gorge of 
the Yellowstone. You’ll find all about it in the 
guide books. 

All that I can say is that without warning or 
preparation I looked into a gulf seventeen hun- 
dred feet deep, with eagles and fish-hawks 
circling far below. And the sides of that gulf 
were one wild welter of color — crimson, 
emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed 
with port wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, 
and silver grey in wide washes. The sides did 
not fall sheer, but were graven by time, and 
water, and air into monstrous head of kings, 
dead chiefs — men and women of the old time. 
So far below that no sound of its strife could 
reach us, the Yellowstone River ran a finger- 
wide strip of jade green. 

The sunlight took those wondrous walls and 
gave fresh hues to those that nature had al- 
ready laid there. 

Evening crept through the pines that shad- 
owed us, but the full glory of the day flamed 
in that canyon as we went out very cautiously 
to a jutting piece of rock — blood-red or pink 
it was — that overhung the deepest deeps of all. 

Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid 


426 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


the clouds of sunset as the spirits sit in Blake’s 
pictures. Giddiness took away all sensation of 
touch or form, but the sense of blinding color 
remained. 

When I reached the mainland again I had 
sworn that I had been floating. 

The maid from New Hampshire said no 
word for a very long time. Then she quoted 
poetry, which was perhaps the best thing she 
could have done. 

“And to think that this show-place has been 
going on all these days an’ none of we ever 
saw it,” said the old lady from Chicago, with 
an acid glance at her husband. 

“No, only the Injians,” said he, unmoved; 
and the maiden and I laughed. 

Inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and 
the power of the mind for wonder limited. 
Though the shining hosts themselves had risen 
choiring from the bottom of the gorge, they 
would not have prevented her papa and one 
baser than he from rolling stones down those 
stupendous rainbow-washed slides. Seventeen 
hundred feet of steepest pitch and rather more 
than seventeen hundred colors for log or 
bowlder to whirl through! 

So we heaved things and saw them gather 
way and bound from white rock to red or yel- 


THE YELLOWSTONE 


427 


low, dragging behind them torrents of color, 
till the noise of their descent ceased and they 
bounded a hundred yards clear at the last into 
the Yellowstone. 

“Eve been down there,” said Toifi, that even- 
ing. “It’s easy to get down if your’re careful 
— just sit an’ slide; but getting up is worse. 
An’ I found down below there two stones just 
marked with a picture of the canyon. I 
wouldn't sell these rocks not for fifteen dol- 
lars.” 

And papa and I crawled down to the Yellow- 
stone — just above the first little fall — to wet a 
line for good luck. The round moon came up 
and turned the cliffs and pines into silver; and 
a two-pound trout came up also, and we slew 
him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into 
that wild river. 

****** 

Then out and away to Livingstone once 
more. The maiden from New Hampshire dis- 
appeared, papa and mamma with her. Dis- 
appeared, too, the old lady from Chicago, and 
the others. 




CHICAGO 













V 


CHICAGO 

“I know thy cunning and thy greed, 

Thy hard high lust and wilful deed, 

And all thy glory loves to tell 
Of specious gifts material.” 

T HAVE struck a city — a real city — and they 
-■* call it Chicago. 

The other places do not count. San Fran-, 
cisco was a pleasure-resort as well as a city, 
and Salt Lake was a phenomenon. 

This place is the first American city I have 
encountered. It holds rather more than a 
million of people with bodies, and stands on 
the same sort of soil as Calcutta. Having seen 
it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It 
is inhabited by savages. Its water is the water 
of the Hooghly, and its air is dirt. Also it 
says that it is the “boss” town of America. 

I do not believe that it has anything to do 
with this country. They told me to go to the 
Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and 
mirrored, and there I found a huge hall of tes- 
sellated marble crammed with people talking 
43i 


CHICAGO 


432 

about money, and spitting about everywhere. 
Other barbarians charged in and out of this 
inferno with letters and telegrams in their 
hands, and yet others shouted at each other. 
A man who had drunk quite as much as was 
good for him told me that this was “the finest 
hotel in the finest city on God Almighty’s 
earth.” By the way, when an American wishes 
to indicate the next country or state, he says, 
“God A’mighty’s earth.” This prevents dis- 
cussion and flatters his vanity. 

Then I went out into the streets, which are 
long and flat and without end. And verily it 
is not a good thing to live in the East for any 
length of time. Your ideas grow to clash with 
those held by every right-thinking man. I 
looked down interminable vistas flanked with 
nine, ten, and fifteen-storied houses, and 
crowded with men and women, and the show 
impressed me with a great horror. 

Except in London — and I have forgotten 
what London was like — I had never seen so 
many white people together, and never such a 
collection of miserables. There was no color 
in the street and no beauty — only a maze of 
wire ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging 
under foot. 

A cab-driver volunteered to show me the 


CHICAGO 


433 


glory of the town for so much an hour, and 
with him I wandered far. He conceived that 
all this turmoil and squash was a thing to be 
reverently admired, that it was good to hud- 
dle men together in fifteen layers, one atop of 
the other, and to dig holes in the ground for 
offices. 

He said that Chicago was a live town, and 
that all the creatures hurrying by me were 
engaged in business. That is to say they were 
trying to make some money that they might 
not die through lack of food to put into their 
bellies. He took me to canals as black as ink, 
and filled with untold abominations, and bid 
me watch the stream of traffic across the 
bridges. 

He then took me into a saloon, and while I 
drank made me note that the floor was cov- 
ered with coins sunk in cement. A Hottentot 
would not have been guilty of this cort of 
barbarism. The coins made an effect pretty 
enough, but the man who put them there had 
no thought of beauty, and, therefore, he was a 
savage. 

Then my cab-driver showed me business 
blocks gay with signs and studded with fan- 
tastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and 
looking down the long street so adorned, it 


434 


CHICAGO 


was as though each vender stood at his door, 
howling : 

“For the sake of money, employ or buy of 
me, and me only!” 

Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine- 
relief distribution? You know then how the 
men leap into the air, stretching out their arms 
above the crowd in the hope of being seen, 
while the women dolorously slap the stomachs 
of their children and whimper. I had sooner 
watch famine relief than the white man en- 
gaged in what he calls legitimate competition. 
The one I understand. The other makes me 
ill. 

And the cabman said that these things were 
the proof of progress, and by that I knew he 
had been reading his newspaper, as every in- 
telligent American should. The papers tell 
their clientele in language fitted to their com- 
prehension that the snarling together of tele- 
graph-wires, the heaving up of houses, and the 
making of money is progress. 

I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, 
wandering through scores of miles of these 
terrible streets and jostling some few hundred 
thousand of these terrible people who talked 
paisa bat through their noses. 

The cabman left me; but after awhile I 


CHICAGO 


435 


picked up another man, who was full of fig- 
ures, and into my ears he poured them as oc- 
casion required or the big blank factories sug- 
gested. Here they turned out so many hun- 
dred thousand dollars’ worth of such and such 
an article ; there so many million other things ; 
this house was worth so many million dollars ; 
that one so many million, more or less. It 
was like listening to a child babbling of its 
hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool 
playing with buttons. But I was expected to 
do more than listen or watch. He demanded 
that I should admire; and the utmost that I 
could say was : 

“Are these things so ? Then I am very sorry 
for you.” 

That made him angry, and he said that in- 
sular envy made me unresponsive. So, you 
see, I could not make him understand. 

About four-and-a-half hours after Adam 
was turned out of the Garden of Eden he felt 
hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her 
head was not broken by the descending fruit, 
shinned up a cocoanut-palm. That hurt his 
legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe 
heavily, and Eve was tormented with fear lest 
her lord should miss his footing, and so bring 
the tragedy of this world to an end ere the 


43 ^ 


CHICAGO 


curtain had fairly risen. Had I met Adam 
then, I should have been sorry for him. To- 
day I find eleven hundred thousand of his sons 
just as far advanced as their father in the art 
of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to 
him in that they think that their palm-trees 
lead straight to the skies. Consequently, I am 
sorry in rather more than a million different 
ways. 

In the East bread comes naturally, even to 
the poorest, by a little scratching or the gift of 
a friend not quite so poor. In less favored 
countries one is apt to forget. Then I went 
to bed. And that was on a Saturday night. 

Sunday brought me the queerest experiences 
of all — a revelation of barbarism complete. I 
found a place that was officially described as 
a church. It was a circus really, but that the 
worshippers did not know. There were 
flowers all about the building, which was fitted 
up with plush and stained oak and much lux- 
ury, including twisted brass candlesticks of se- 
verest Gothic design. 

To these things and a congregation of sav- 
ages entered suddenly a wonderful man, com- 
pletely in the confidence of their God, whom he 
treated colloquially and exploited very much 
as a newspaper reporter would exploit a for- 


CHICAGO 


437 


eign potentate. But, unlike the newspaper re- 
porter, he never allowed his listeners to forget 
that he, and not He, was the centre of attrac- 
tion. With a voice of silver and with imagery 
borrowed from the auction-room, he built up 
foi* his hearers a heaven on the lines of the 
Palmer House (but with all the gilding real 
gold, and all the plate-glass diamond), and set 
in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, 
very shrewd creation that he called God. One 
sentence at this point caught my delighted ear. 
It was apropos of some question of the Judg- 
ment, and ran: 

“No! I tell you God doesn’t do business 
that way.” 

He was giving them a deity whom they 
could comprehend, and a gold and jeweled 
heaven in which they could take a natural in- 
terest. He interlarded his performance with 
the slang of the streets, the counter, and the 
exchange, and he said that religion ought to 
enter into daily life. Consequently, I presume 
he introduced it as daily life — his own and the 
life of his friends. 

Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring 
no benediction at such hands. But the persons 
who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and 
I understood that I had met with a popular 
preacher. 


43 ^ 


CHICAGO 


Later on, when I had perused the sermons of 
a gentleman called Talmage and some others, 
I perceived that I had been listening to a very 
mild specimen. Yet that man, with his brutal 
gold and silver idols, his hands-in-pocket, 
cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the- 
head style of dealing with the sacred vessels, 
would count himself, spiritually, quite compe- 
tent to send a mission to convert the Indians. 

All that Sunday I listened to people who 
said that the mere fact of spiking down strips 
of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron 
thing to run along them was progress, that the 
telephone was progress, and the net-work of 
wires overhead was progress. They repeated 
their statements again and again. 

One of them took me to their City Hall and 
Board of Trade works, and pointed it out with 
pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and the 
streets in front of it were narrow and unclean. 
When I saw the faces of the men who did 
business in that building, I felt that there had 
been a mistake in their billeting. 

By the way, ’tis a consolation to feel that I 
am not writing to an English audience. Then 
I should have to fall into feigned ecstasies 
over the marvelous progress of Chicago since 
the days of the great fire, to allude casually to 


CHICAGO 


439 


the raising of the entire city so many feet above 
the level of the lake which it faces, and gen- 
erally to grovel before the golden calf. But 
you, who are desperately poor, and therefore 
by these standards of no account, know things, 
will understand when I write that they have 
managed to get a million of men together on 
flat land, and that the bulk of these men to- 
gether appear to be lower than Mahajans and 
not so companionable as a Punjabi Jat after 
harvest. 

But I don’t think it was the blind hurry of 
the people, their argot , and their grand ig- 
norance of things beyond their immediate in- 
terests that displeased me so much as a study 
of the daily papers of Chicago. 

Imprimis , there was some sort of a dispute 
between New York and Chicago as to which 
town should give an exhibition of products to 
be hereafter holden, and through the medium 
of their more dignified journals the two cities 
were yahooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like 
opposition newsboys. They called it humor, 
but it sounded like something quite different. 

That was only the first trouble. The second 
lay in the tone of the productions. Leading 
articles which include gems such as “Back of 
such and such a place,” or, “We noticed, Tues- 


440 


CHICAGO 


day, such an event,” or, “don’t” for “does 
not,” are things to be accepted with thankful- 
ness. All that made me want to cry was that 
in these papers were faithfully reproduced all 
the war-cries and “back-talk” of the Palmer 
House bar, the slang of the barber-shops, the 
mental elevation and integrity of the Pullman 
car porter, the dignity of the dime museum, 
and the accuracy of the excited fish-wife. I 
am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper 
educates the public. Then I am compelled to 
believe that the public educate the paper; yet 
suicides on the press are rare. 

Just when the sense of unreality and oppres- 
sion was strongest upon me, and when I most 
wanted help, a man sat at my side and began 
to talk what he called politics. 

I had chanced to pay about six shillings for 
a traveling-cap worth eighteen-pence, and he 
made of the fact a text for a sermon. He said 
that this was a rich country, and that the peo- 
ple liked to pay two hundred per cent, on the 
value of a thing. They could afford it. He 
said that the government imposed a protective 
duty of from ten to seventy per cent, on for- 
eign-made articles, and that the American 
manufacturer consequently could sell his goods 
for a healthy sum. Thus an imported hat 


CHICAGO 


441 


would, with duty, cost two guineas. The 
American manufacturer would make a hat for 
seventeen shillings, and sell it for one pound 
fifteen. In these things, he said, lay the great- 
ness of America and the effeteness of England. 
Competition between factory and factory kept 
the prices down to decent limits, but I was 
never to forget that this people were a rich 
people, not like the pauper Continentals, and 
that they enjoyed paying duties. 

To my weak intellect this seemed rather like 
juggling with counters. Everything that I 
have yet purchased costs about twice as much 
as it would in England, and when native made 
is of inferior quality. 

Moreover, since these lines were first 
thought of, I have visited a gentleman who 
owned a factory which used to produce things. 
He owned the factory still. Not a man was in 
it, but he was drawing a handsome income 
from a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed 
in order that it might not produce things. 
This man said that if protection were aban- 
doned, a tide of pauper labor would flood the 
country, and as I looked at his factory I 
thought how entirely better it was to have no 
labor of any kind whatever rather than face 
so horrible a future. 


442 


CHICAGO 


Meantime, do you remember that this pe- 
culiar country enjoys paying money for value 
not received? I am an alien, and for the life 
of me I cannot see why six shillings should be 
paid for eighteen-penny caps, or eight shillings 
for half-crown cigar-cases. When the country 
fills up to a decently populated level a few mil- 
lion people who are not aliens will be smitten 
with the same sort of blindness. 

But my friend’s assertion somehow thor- 
oughly suited the grotesque ferocity of Chi- 
cago. 

See now and judge! In the village of Isser 
Jang, on the road to Montgomery, there be 
four Changar women who winnow corn — some 
seventy bushels a year. Beyond their hut lives 
Purun Dass, the money-lender, who on good 
security lends as much as five thousand rupees 
in a year. Jowala Singh, the smith, mends the 
village plows — some thirty, broken at the 
share, in three hundred and sixty-five days; 
and Hukm Chund, who is letter- writer and 
head of the little club under the travelers’ tree, 
generally keeps the village posted in such gos- 
sip as the barber and the midwife have not yet 
made public property. 

Chicago husks and winnows her wheat by 
the million bushels, a hundred banks lend hun- 


CHICAGO 


443 


dreds of millions of dollars in the year, and 
scores of factories turn out plow-gear and ma- 
chinery by steam. Scores of daily papers do 
work which Hukm Chund and the barber and 
the midwife perform, with due regard for pub- 
lic opinion, in the village of Isser Jang. So 
far as manufactories go, the difference be- 
tween Chicago on the lake, and Isser Jang on 
the Montgomery road, is one of degree only, 
and not of kind. As far as the understanding 
of the users of life goes, Isser Jang, for all its 
seasonal cholers, has the advantage over Chi- 
cago. 

Jowala Singh knows and takes care to avoid 
the three or four ghoul-haunted fields on the 
outskirts of the village ; but he is not urged by 
millions of devils to run about all day in the 
sun and swear that his plowshares are the best 
in the Punjab; nor does Purun Dass fly in an 
ekka more than once or twice a year, and he 
knows, on a pinch, how to use the railway and 
the telegraph as well as any son of Israel in 
Chicago. But this is absurd. 

The East is not the West, and these men 
must continue to deal with the machinery of 
life, and to call it progress. Their very preach- 
ers dare not rebuke them. They gloss over 
the hunting for money and the thr ice-sharp- 


444 


CHICAGO 


ened bitterness of Adam’s curse, by saying that 
such things dower a man with a larger range 
of thoughts and higher aspirations. They do 
not say, “Free yourselves from your own slav- 
ery,” but rather, “If you can possibly manage 
it, do not set quite so much store on the things 
of this world.” 

And they do not know what the things of 
this world are! 

I went off to see cattle killed, by way of 
clearing my head, which, as you will perceive 
was getting muddled. They say every Eng- 
lishman goes to the Chicago stock-yards. You 
shall find them about six miles from the city; 
and once having seen them, you will never for- 
get the sight. 

As far as the eye can reach stretches a 
township of cattle-pens, cunningly divided in- 
to blocks, so that the animals of any pen can 
be speedily driven out close to an inclined tim- 
ber path which leads to an elevated covered 
way straddling high above the pens. These via- 
ducts are two-storied. On the upper story tramp 
the doomed cattle, stolidly for the most part. 
On the lower, with a scuffling of sharp hoofs 
and multitudinous yells, run the pigs, the same 
end being appointed for each. Thus you will 
see the gangs of cattle waiting their turn — as 


CHICAGO 


445 


they wait sometimes for days; and they need 
not be distressed by the sight of their fellows 
running about in the fear of Meath. All they 
know is that a man on horseback causes their 
next-door neighbors to move by means of a 
whip. Certain bars and fences are unshipped 
and behold ! that crowd have gone up the 
mouth of a sloping tunnel and return no more. 

It is different with the pigs. They shriek 
back the news of the exodus to their friends, 
and a hundred pens skirl responsive. 

It was to the pigs I first addressed myself. 
Selecting a viaduct which was full of them, 
as I could hear, though I could not see, I 
marked a sombre building whereto it ran. and 
went there, not unalarmed by stray cattle who 
had managed to escape from their proper 
quarters. A pleasant smell of brine warned me 
of what was coming. I entered the factory 
and found it full of pork in barrels, and on 
another story more pork unbarrelled, and in 
a huge room the halves of swine, for whose 
behoof great lumps of ice were being pitched 
in at the window. That room was the mor- 
tuary chamber where the pigs lay for a little 
while in state ere they began their progress 
through such passages as kings may some- 
times travel. 


446 


CHICAGO 


Turning a corner, and not noting an over- 
head arrangement of greased rail, wheel, and 
pulley, I ran into the arms of four eviscerated 
carcasses, all pure white and of a human as- 
pect, pushed by a man clad in vehement red. 
When I leaped aside, the floor was slippery 
under me. Also there was a flavor of farm- 
yard in my nostrils and the shouting of a mul- 
titude in my ears. But there was no joy in 
that shouting. Twelve men stood in two lines, 
six a side. Between them and overhead ran 
the railway of death that had nearly shunted 
me through the window. Each man carried 
a knife, the sleeves of his shirt were cut off 
at the elbows, and from bosom to heel he was 
blood-red. 

Beyond this perspective was a column of 
steam, and beyond that was where I worked 
my awe-struck way, unwilling to touch beam 
or wall. The atmosphere was stifling as a 
night in the rains by reason of the steam and 
the crowd. I climbed to the beginning of 
things and, perched upon a narrow beam, over- 
looked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in 
Wisconsin. They had just been shot out of 
the mouth of the viaduct and huddled together 
in a large pen. Thence they were flicked per- 
suasively, a few at a time, into a smaller cham- 


CHICAGO 


447 


ber, and there a man fixed tackle on their hind- 
er legs, so that they rose in the air, suspended 
from the railway of death. 

Oh ! it was then they shrieked and called on 
their mothers, and made promises of amend- 
ment, till the tackle-man punted them in their 
backs and they slid head down into a brick- 
floored passage, very like a big kitchen sink, 
that was blood-red. There awaited them a 
red man with a knife, which he passed jauntily 
through their throats, and the full-voiced shriek 
became a splutter, and then a fall as of heavy 
tropical rain, and the red man, who was backed 
against the passage-wall, you will understand, 
stood clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and 
passed his hand over his eyes, not from any 
feeling of compassion, but because the spurted 
blood was in his eyes, and he had barely time 
to stick the next arrival. Then that first stuck 
swine dropped, still kicking, into a great vat 
of boiling water, and spoke no more words, but 
wallowed in obedience to some unseen ma- 
chinery, and presently came forth at the lower 
end of the vat, and was heaved on the blades 
of a blunt paddle-wheel, things which said 
“Hough, hough, hough!” and skelped all the 
hair off him, except what little a couple of men 
with knives could remove. 


448 


CHICAGO 


Then he was again hitched by the heels to 
that said railway, and passed down the line 
of the twelve men, each man with a knife — 
losing with each man a certain amount of his 
individuality, which was taken away in a 
wheelbarrow, and when he reached the last 
man he was very beautiful to behold, but ex- 
cessively unstuffed and limp. Preponderance 
of individuality was ever a bar to foreign trav- 
el. That pig could have been in case to visit 
you in India had he not parted with some of 
his most cherished notions. 

The dissecting part impressed me not so 
much as the slaying. They were so exces- 
sively alive, these pigs. And then, they were 
so excessively dead, and the man in the drip- 
ping, clammy, hot passage did not seem to 
care, and ere the blood of such a one had ceased 
to foam on the floor, such another and four 
friends with him had shrieked and died. But 
a pig is only the unclean animal — the forbid- 
den of the prophet. 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 



VI 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 

T SHOULD very much like to deliver a dis- 
sertation on the American army and the 
possibilities of its extension. You see, it is 
such a beautiful little army, and the dear people 
don’t quite understand what to do with it. 
The theory is that it is an instructional nucleus 
round which the militia of the country will 
rally, and from which they will get a stiffening 
in time of danger. Yet other people consider 
that the army should be built, like a pair of 
lazy tongs — on the principle of elasticity and 
extension — so that in time of need it may fill 
up its skeleton battalions and empty saddle 
troops. This is real wisdom, because the 
American army, as at present constituted, is 
made up of : 

Twenty-five regiments infantry, ten com- 
panies each. 

Ten regiments cavalry, twelve companies 
each. 

Five regiments artillery, twelve companies 
each. 


451 


45 2 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 


Now there is a notion in the air to reorgan- 
ize the service on these lines : 

Eighteen regiments infantry at four bat- 
talions, four companies each; third battalion, 
skeleton ; fourth on paper. 

Eight regiments cavalry at four battalions, 
four troops each; third battalion, skeleton; 
fourth on paper. 

Five regiments artillery at four battalions, 
four companies each ; third battalion, skeleton ; 
fourth on paper. 

Observe the beauty of this business. The 
third battalion will have its officers, but no 
men; the fourth will probably have a rendez- 
vous and some equipment. 

It is not contemplated to give it anything 
more definite at present. Assuming the regi- 
ments to be made up to full complement, we 
get an army of fifty thousand men, which after 
the need passes away must be cut down fifty 
per cent., to the huge delight of the officers. 

The military needs of the States be three: 
(a) Frontier warfare, an employment well 
within the grip of the present army of twenty- 
five thousand, and in the nature of things grow- 
ing less arduous year by year; (b) internal 
riots and commotions which rise up like a dust 
devil, whirl furiously, and die out long before 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 


453 


the authorities at Washington could begin to 
fill up even the third skeleton battalions, much 
less hunt about for material for the fourth; 
(c) civil war, in which, as the case in the af- 
fair of the North and South, the regular army 
would be swamped in the mass of militia and 
armed volunteers that would turn the land in- 
to a hell. 

Yet the authorities persist in regarding an 
external war as a thing to be seriously con- 
sidered. 

The Power that would disembark troops on 
American soil would be capable of heaving a 
shovelful of mud into the Atlantic in the hope 
of filling it up. Consequently, the authorities 
are fascinated with the idea of the sliding 
scale or concertina army. This is an heredi- 
tary instinct, for you know that when we Eng- 
lish have got together two companies, one ma- 
chine gun, a sick bullock, forty generals, and 
a mass of W. O. forms, we say we possess “an 
army corps capable of indefinite extension.” 

The American army is a beautiful little 
army. Some day, when all the Indians are 
happily dead or drunk, it ought to make the 
finest scientific and survey corps that the world 
has ever seen ; it does excellent work now, but 
there is this defect in its nature: It is officered, 
as you know, from West Point. 


454 THE AMERICAN ARMY 


The mischief of it is that West Point seems 
to be created for the purpose of spreading a 
general knowledge of military matters among 
the people. A boy goes up to that institution, 
gets his pass, and returns to civil life, so they 
tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he 
is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his 
learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, 
that man will be a nuisance, because he is a 
hideously versatile American, to begin with, 
as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and 
with all the racial disregard for human life 
to back him through any demi-semi-profes- 
sional generalship. 

In a country where, as the records of the 
daily papers show, men engaged in n conflict 
with police or jails are all too ready to adopt 
a military formation and get heavily shot in 
a sort of cheap, half-constructed warfare, in- 
stead of being decently scared by the appear- 
ance of the military, this sort of arrangement 
does not seem wise. 

The bond between the States is of an amaz- 
ing tenuity. So long as they do not absolute- 
ly march into the District of Columbia, sit on 
the Washington statues, and invent a flag of 
their own, they can legislate, lynch, hunt ne- 
groes through swamps, divorce, railroad, and 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 


45 5 


rampage as much as ever they choose. They 
do not need knowledge of their own military 
strength to back their genial lawlessness. 

That regular army, which is a dear little 
army, should be kept to itself, blooded on de- 
tachment duty, turned into the paths of science, 
and now and again assembled at feasts of Free 
Masons, and so forth. 

It is too tiny to be a political power. The 
immortal wreck of the Grand Army of the Re- 
public is a political power of the largest and 
most unblushing description. It ought not 
to help to lay the foundations of an amateur 
military power that is blind and irresponsible. 

By great good luck the evil-minded train, 
already delayed twelve hours by a burned 
bridge, brought me to the city on a Saturday 
by way of that valley which the Mormons, 
over their efforts, had caused to blossom like 
the rose. Twelve hours previously I had en- 
tered into a new world where, in conversation, 
every one was either a Mormon or a Gentile. 
It is not seemly for a free and independent 
citizen to dub himself a Gentile, but the Mayor 
of Ogden — which is the Gentile city of the val- 
ley — told me that there must be some distinc- 
tion between the two flocks. 

Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or 


456 THE AMERICAN ARMY 


the shining levels of the Salt Lake had been 
reached, that mayor — himself a Gentile, and 
one renowned for his dealings with the Mor- 
mons — told me that the great question of the 
existence of the power within the power was 
being gradually solved by the ballot and by 
education. 

All the beauty of the valley could not make 
me forget it. And the valley is very fair. 
Bench after bench of land, flat as a table against 
the flanks of the ringing hills, marks where 
the Salt Lake rested for awhile in its collapse 
from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long 
and thirty broad. 

There are the makings of a very fine creed 
about Mormonism. To begin with, the Church 
is rather more absolute than that of Rome. 
Drop the polygamy plank in the platform, but 
on the other hand deal lightly with certain 
forms of excess ; keep the quality of the recruit 
down to the low mental level, and see that the 
best of all the agricultural science available 
is in the hands of the elders, and there you 
have a first-class engine for pioneer work. The 
tawdry mysticism and the borrowing from 
Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and 
Dane, the Welshman and the Cornish cotter, 
just as well as a highly organized heaven. 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 


457 


Then I went about the streets and peeped 
into people’s front windows, and the decora- 
tions upon the tables were after the manner of 
the year 1850. Main Street was full of coun- 
try folk from the desert, come in to trade with 
the Zion Mercantile Cooperative Institute. The 
Church, I fancy, looks after the finances of this 
thing, and it consequently pays good dividends. 

The faces of the women were not lovely. In- 
deed, but for the certainty that ugly persons 
are just as irrational in the matter of undi- 
vided love as the beautiful, it seems that poly- 
gamy was a blessed institution for the women, 
and that only the dread threats of the spiritual 
power could drive the hulking, board-faced 
men into it. The women wore hideous gar- 
ments, and the men appeared to be tied up 
with strings. 

They would market all that afternoon, and 
on Sunday go to the praying-place. I tried 
to talk to a few of them, but they spoke strange 
tongues, and stared and behaved like cows. 
Yet one woman, and not an altogether ugly 
one, confided to me that she hated the idea of 
Salt Lake City being turned into a show-place 
for the amusement of the Gentiles. 

“If we ’ave our own institutions, that ain’t 
no reason why people should come ’ere and 
stare at us, his it ?” 


458 THE AMERICAN ARMY 


The dropped “h” betrayed her. 

“And when did you leave England ?” I said. 

“Summer of ’84. I am Dorset,” she said. 
‘The Mormon agent was very good to us, and 
we was very poor. Now we’re better off — my 
father, an’ mother, an’ me.” 

“Then you like the State?” 

She misunderstood at first. 

“Oh, I ain’t livin’ in the state of polygamy. 
Not me, yet. I ain’t married. I like where I 
am. I’ve got things o’ my own — and some 
land.” 

“But I suppose you will” — 

“Not me. I ain’t like them Swedes an’ 
Danes. I ain’t got nothin’ to say for or against 
polygamy. It’s the elders’ business, an’ be- 
tween you an’ me, I don’t think it’s going on 
much longer. You’ll ’ear them in the ’ouse 
to-morrer talkin’ as if it was spreadin’ all over 
America. The Swedes, they think it his. I 
know it hisn’t.” 

“But you’ve got your land all right ?” 

“Oh, yes; we’ve got our land, an’ we never 
say aught against polygamy, o’ course — father, 
an’ mother, an’ me.” 

On a table-land overlooking all the city 
Stands the United States garrison of infantry 
and artillery. The State of Utah can do near- 


THE AMERICAN ARMY 


459 


ly anything it pleases until that much-to-be-de- 
sired hour when the Gentile vote shall quietly 
swamp out Mormonism; but the garrison is 
kept there in case of accidents. The big, shark- 
mouthed, pig-eared, heavy-boned farmers 
sometimes take to their creed with wildest fa- 
naticism, and in past years have made life ex- 
cessively unpleasant for the Gentile when he 
was few in the land. But today, so far from 
killing openly or secretly, or burning Gentile 
farms, it is all the Mormon dare do to feebly 
try to boycott the interloper. His journals 
preach defiance to the United States Govern- 
ment, and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the 
preachers follow suit. 

When I went there, the place was full of 
people who would have been much better for 
a washing. A man rose up and told them that 
they were the chosen of God, the elect of Israel ; 
that they were to obey their priests, and that 
there was a good time coming. I fancy that 
they had heard all this before so many times 
it produced no impression whatever, even as 
the sublimest mysteries of another faith lose 
salt through constant iteration. They breathed 
heavily through their noses, and stared straight 
in front of them — impassive as flat fish. 






























AMERICA’S DEFENCELESS COASTS 











































VII 


AMERICA’S DEFENCELESS COASTS 

J UST suppose that America were twenty 
days distant from England. Then a man 
could study its customs with undivided soul; 
but being so very near next door, he goes about 
the land with one eye on the smoke of the flesh- 
pots of the old country across the seas, while 
with the other he squints biliously and preju- 
dicially at the alien. 

I can lay my hand upon my sacred heart 
and affirm that up to to-day I have never taken 
three consecutive trips by rail without being 
delayed by an accident. That it was an acci- 
dent to another train makes no difference. My 
own turn may come next. 

A few miles from peaceful, pleasure-loving 
Lakewood they had managed to upset an ex- 
press goods train to the detriment of the flim- 
sy permanent way; and thus the train which 
should have left at three departed at seven in 
the evening. I was not angry. I was scarcely 
even interested. When an American train 

463 


464 


AMERICA’S 


starts on time I begin to anticipate disaster — a 
visitation for such good luck, you understand. 

Buffalo is a large village of a quarter of a 
million inhabitants, situated on the seashore, 
which is falsely called Lake Erie. It is a peace- 
ful place, and more like an English county 
town than most of its friends. 

Once clear of the main business streets, you 
launch upon miles and miles of asphalted roads 
running between cottages and cut-stone resi- 
dences of those who have money and peace. 
All the Eastern cities own this fringe of ele- 
gance, but except in Chicago nowhere is the 
fringe deeper or more heavily widened than 
in Buffalo. 

The American will go to a bad place be- 
cause he cannot speak English, and is proud 
of it; but he knows how to make a home for 
himself and his mate, knows how to keep the 
grass green in front of his veranda, and how 
to fullest use the mechanism of life — hot water, 
gas, good bell-ropes, telephones, etc. His 
shops sell him delightful household fitments at 
very moderate rates, and he is encompassed 
with all manner of labor-saving appliances. 
This does not prevent his wife and his daugh- 
ter working themselves to death over house- 
hold drudgery ; but the intention is good. 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 465 


When you have seen the outside of a few 
hundred thousand of these homes and the in- 
sides of a few score, you begin to understand 
why the American (the respectable one) does 
not take a deep interest in what they call ‘‘poli- 
tics,” and why he is so vaguely and generally 
proud of the country that enables him to be 
so comfortable. How can the owner of a 
dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imi- 
tation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold 
water laid on, a bed of geraniums and holly- 
hocks, a baby crawling down the veranda, and 
a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently hissing 
over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August 
evening — how can such a man despair of the 
Republic, or descend into the streets on voting 
days and mix cheerfully with “the boys”? 

No, it is the stranger — the homeless jackal 
of a stranger — whose interest in the country is 
limited to his hotel-bill and a railway-ticket, 
that can run from Dan to Beersheba, crying: 

“All is barren!” 

Every good American wants a home — a 
pretty house and a little piece of land of his 
very own; and every other good American 
seems to get it. 

It was when my gigantic intellect was grap- 
pling with this question that I confirmed a dis- 


466 


AMERICA’S 


covery half made in the West. The natives 
of most classes marry young — absurdly young. 
One of my informants — not the twenty-two- 
year-old husband I met on Lake Chautauqua — 
said that from twenty to twenty-four was about 
the usual time for this folly. And when I 
asked whether the practice was confined to the 
constitutionally improvident classes, he said 
“No” very quickly. He said it was a general 
custom, and nobody saw anything wrong with 
it. 

“I guess, perhaps, very early marriage may 
account for a good deal of the divorce,” said 
he, reflectively. 

Whereat I was silent. Their marriages and 
their divorces only concern these people; and 
neither I traveling, nor you, who may come 
after, have any right to make rude remarks 
about them. Only — only coming from a land 
where a man begins to lightly turn to thoughts 
of love not before he is thirty, I own that play- 
ing at house-keeping before that age rather 
surprised me. Out in the West, though, they 
marry, boys and girls, from sixteen upward, 
and I have met more than one bride of fif- 
teen — husband aged twenty. 

“When man and woman are agreed, what 
can the Kazi do?” 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 467 


From those peaceful homes, and the envy 
they inspire (two trunks and a walking-stick 
and a bit of pine forest in British Columbia are 
not satisfactory, any way you look at them), 
I turned me to the lake front of Buffalo, where 
the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and 
the locomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and 
the canal barges jostle the lumber-raft half 
a mile long as it snakes across the water in 
tow of a launch, and earth, and sky, and sea 
alike are thick with smoke. 

In the old days, before the railway ran into 
the city, all the business quarters fringed the 
lake-shore where the traffic was largest. To- 
day the business quarters have gone up-town 
to meet the railroad ; the lake traffic still ex- 
ists, but you shall find a narrow belt of red- 
brick desolation, broken windows, gap-toothed 
doors, and streets where the grass grows be- 
tween the crowded wharves and the bustling 
city. To the lake front comes wheat from 
Chicago, lumber, coal, and ore, and a large 
trade in cheap excursionists. 

It was my felicity to catch a grain steamer 
and an elevator emptying that same steamer. 
The steamer might have been two thousand 
tons burden. She was laden with wheat in 
bulk; from stem to stern, thirteen feet deep, 


468 


AMERICA’S 


lay the clean, red wheat. There was no twen- 
ty-five per cent, dirt admixture about it at all. 
It was wheat, fit for the grindstones as it lay. 
They manoeuvred the fore-hatch of that steam- 
er directly under an elevator — a house of red 
tin a hundred and fifty feet high. Then they 
let down into that fore-hatch a trunk as if it 
had been the trunk of an elephant, but stiff, 
because it was a pipe of iron-champed wood. 
And the trunk had a steel-shod nose to it, and 
contained an endless chain of steel buckets. 

Then the captain swore, raising his eyes to 
heaven, and a gruff voice answered him from 
the place he swore at, and certain machinery, 
also in the firmament, began to clack, and the 
glittering, steel-shod nose of that trunk bur- 
rowed into the wheat, and the wheat quivered 
and sunk upon the instant as water sinks when 
the siphon sucks, because the steel buckets with- 
in the trunk were flying upon their endless 
round, carrying away each its appointed mor- 
sel of wheat. 

The elevator was a Persian well wheel — a 
wheel squashed out thin and cased in a pipe, 
a wheel driven not by bullocks, but by much 
horse-power, licking up the grain at the rate 
of thousands of bushels the hour. And the 
wheat sunk in the fore-hatch while a man 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 469 


looked — sunk till the brown timbers of the 
bulkheads showed bare, and men leaped down 
through clouds of golden dust and shoveled 
the wheat furiously round the nose of the 
trunk, and got a steam-shovel of glittering steel 
and made that shovel also, till there remained 
of the grain not more than a horse leaves in 
the fold of his nose-bag. 

In this manner do they handle wheat at Buf- 
falo. On one side of the elevator is the steam- 
er, on the other the railway track; and the 
wheat is loaded into the cars in bulk. Wah! 
wah ! God is great, and I do not think He ever 
intended Gar Sahai or Luckman Narain to sup- 
ply England with her wheat. India can cut 
in not without profit to herself when her har- 
vest is good and the American yield poor; but 
this very big country can, upon the average, 
supply the earth with all the beef and bread 
that is required. 

A man in the train said to me : 

“We kin feed all the earth, jest as easily as 
we kin whip all the earth.” 

Now the second statement is as false as the 
first is true. One of these days the respectable 
Republic will find this out. 

Unfortunately we, the English, will never 
be the people to teach her; because she is a 


470 


AMERICA'S 


chartered libertine allowed to say and do any- 
thing she likes, from demanding the head of 
the empress in an editorial waste-basket, to 
chevying Canadian schooners up and down 
the Alaska Seas. It is perfectly impossible 
to go to war with these people, whatever they 
may do. 

They are much too nice, in the first place, 
and in the second, it would throw out all the 
passenger traffic of the Atlantic, and upset the 
financial arrangements of the English syndi- 
cates who have invested their money in brew- 
eries, railways, and the like, and in the third, 
it’s not to be done. Everybody knows that, no 
one better than the American. 

Yet there are other powers who are not 
“ohai band” (of the brotherhood) — China, for 
instance. Try to believe an irresponsible writer 
when he assures you that China’s fleet to-day, 
if properly manned, could waft the entire 
American navy out of the water and into the 
blue. The big, fat Republic that is afraid of 
nothing, because nothing up to the present date 
has happened to make her afraid, is as unpro- 
tected as a jelly-fish. Not internally, of course 
— it would be madness for any Power to throw 
men into America ; they would die — but as far 
as regards coast defence. 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 


471 


From five miles out at sea (I have seen a 
test of her “fortified” ports) a ship of the pow- 
er of H. M. S. “Collingwood” (they haven’t 
run her on a rock yet) would wipe out any 
or every town from San Francisco to Long 
Branch; and three first-class ironclads would 
account for New York, Bartholdi’s Statue and 
all. 

Reflect on this. ’Twould be “Pay up or go 
up” round the entire coast of the United States. 
To this furiously answers the patriotic Ameri- 
can: 

“We should not pay. We should invent a 
Columbiad in Pittsburg or — or anywhere else, 
and blow any outsider into h — 1.” 

They might invent. They might lay waste 
their cities and retire inland, for they can sub- 
sist entirely on their own produce. Meantime, 
in a war waged the only way it could be waged 
by an unscrupulous Power, their coast cities 
and their dock-yards would be ashes. They 
could construct their navy inland if they liked, 
but you could never bring a ship down to the 
water-ways, as they stand now. 

They could not, with an ordinary water 
patrol, despatch one regiment of men six miles 
across the seas. There would be about five 
million excessively angry, armed men pent up 


472 


AMERICA’S 


within American limits. These men would 
require ships to get themselves afloat. The 
country has no such ships, and until the ships 
were built New York need not be allowed a 
single-wheeled carriage within her limits. 

Behold now the glorious condition of this 
Republic which has no fear. There is ransom 
and loot past the counting of man on her sea- 
board alone — plunder that would enrich a na- 
tion — and she has neither a navy nor half a 
dozen first-class ports to guard the whole. No 
man catches a snake by the tail, because the 
creature will sting; but you can build a fire 
around a snake that will make it squirm. 

The country is supposed to be building a 
navy now. When the ships are completed her 
alliance will be worth having — if the alliance 
of any republic can be relied upon. For the 
next three years she can be hurt, and badly 
hurt. Pity it is that she is of our own blood, 
looking at the matter from a Pindarris point of 
view. Dog cannot eat dog. 

These sinful reflections were prompted by 
the sight of the beautifully unprotected con- 
dition of Buffalo — a city that could be made 
to pay up five million dollars without feeling 
it. There are her companies of infantry in a 
sort of port there. A gun-boat brought over 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 


473 


in pieces from Niagara could get the money 
and get away before she could be caught, while 
an unarmored gun-boat guarding Toronto 
could ravage the towns on the lakes. When 
one hears so much of the nation that can whip 
the earth, it is, to say the least of it, surprising 
to find her so temptingly spankable. 

The average American citizen seems to have 
a notion that any Power engaged in strife 
with the Star Spangled Banner will disem- 
bark men from flat-bottomed boats on a con- 
venient beach for the purpose of being shot 
down by local militia. In his own simple 
phraseology : 

“Not by a darned sight. No, sir.” 

Ransom at long range will be about the 
size of it — cash or crash. 

Let us revisit calmer scenes. 

In the heart of Buffalo there stands a mag- 
nificent building which the population do in- 
nocently style a music-hall. Everybody comes 
here of evenings to sit around little tables and 
listen to a first-class orchestra. The place is 
something like the Gaiety Theatre at Simla, 
enlarged twenty times. The “Light Brigade” 
of Buffalo occupy the boxes and the stage, “as 
it was at Simla in the days of old,” and the 
others sit in the parquet. Here I went with 


474 


AMERICA’S 


a friend — poor or boor is the man who cannot 
pick up a friend for a season in America — and 
here was shown the really smart folk of the 
city. I grieve to say I laughed, because when 
an American wishes to be correct he sets him- 
self to imitate the Englishman. This he does 
vilely, and earns not only the contempt of 
his brethren, but the amused scorn of the 
Briton. 

I saw one man who was pointed out to me 
as being the glass of fashion hereabouts. He 
was aggressively English in his get-up. From 
eye-glass to trouser-hem the illusion was per- 
fect, but — he wore with evening-dress but- 
toned boots with brown cloth tops! Not till 
I wandered about this land did I understand 
why the comic papers belabor the Angloma- 
niac. 

Certain young men of the more idiotic sort 
launch into dog-carts and raiment of English 
cut, and here in Buffalo they play polo at four 
in the afternoon. I saw three youths come 
down to the polo-ground faultlessly attired for 
the game and mounted on their best ponies. 
Expecting a game, I lingered; but I was mis- 
taken. These three shining ones with the very 
new yellow hide boots and the red silk sashes 
had assembled themselves for the purpose of 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 


475 


knocking the ball about. They smote with 
great solemnity up and down the grounds, 
while the little boys looked on. When they 
trotted, which was not seldom, they rose and 
sunk in their stirrups with a conscientiousness 
that cried out “Riding-school !” from afar. 

Other young men in the park were riding 
after the English manner, in neatly cut riding- 
trousers and light saddles. Fate in derision 
had made each youth bedizen his animal with 
a checkered enameled leather brow-band visi- 
ble half a mile away — a black-and-white check- 
ered brow-band ! They can’t do it, any more 
than an Englishman, by taking cold, can add 
that indescribable nasal twang to his orches- 
tra. 

The other sight of the evening was a horror. 
The little tragedy played itself out at a neigh- 
boring table where two very young men and 
two very young women were sitting. It did 
not strike me till far into the evening that the 
pimply young reprobates were making the girls 
drunk. They gave them red wine and then 
white, and the voices rose slightly with the 
maidens’ cheek flushes. I watched, wishing to 
stay, and the youths drank till their speech 
thickened and their eye-balls grew watery. It 
was sickening to see, because I knew what was 


476 


AMERICA’S 


going to happen. My friend eyed the group, 
and said : 

“Maybe they’re children of respectable peo- 
ple. I hardly think, though, they’d be allowed 
out without any better escort than these boys. 
And yet the place is a place where every one 
comes, as you see. They may be Little Im- 
moralities — in which case they wouldn’t be 
so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of 
wine. They may be” — 

Whatever they were they got indubitably 
drunk — there in that lovely hall, surrounded 
by the best of Buffalo society. One could do 
nothing except invoke the judgment of Heaven 
on the two boys, themselves half sick with 
liquor. At the close of the performance the 
quieter maiden laughed vacantly and protested 
she couldn’t keep her feet. The four linked 
arms, and staggering, flickered out into the 
street — drunk, gentlemen and ladies, as Davy’s 
swine, drunk as lords ! They disappeared down 
a side avenue, but I could hear their laugh- 
ter long after they were out of sight. 

And they were all four children of sixteen 
and seventeen. Then, recanting previous opin- 
ions, I became a prohibitionist. Better it is 
that a man should go without his beer in pub- 
lic places, and content himself with swearing 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 


477 


at the narrow-mindedness of the majority; 
better it is to poison the inside with very vile 
temperance drinks, and to buy lager furtively 
at back-doors, than to bring temptation to the 
lips of young fools such as the four I had 
seen. I understand now why the preachers 
rage against drink. I have said : “There is no 
harm in it, taken moderately and yet my 
own demand for beer helped directly to send 
those two girls reeling down the dark street to 
— God alone knows what end. 

If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth tak- 
ing a little trouble to come at — such trouble 
as a man will undergo to compass his own de- 
sires. It is not good that we should let it lie 
before the eyes of children, and I have been a 
fool in writing to the contrary. Very sorry 
for myself, I sought a hotel, and found in the 
hall a reporter who wished to know what I 
thought of the country. Him I lured into con- 
versation about his own profession, and from 
him gained much that confirmed me in my 
views of the grinding tyranny of that thing 
which they call the Press here. Thus : 

I — But you talk about interviewing people 
whether they like it or not. Have you no 
bounds beyond which even your indecent curi- 
osity must not go? 


478 


AMERICA’S 


He — I haven’t struck ’em yet. What do 
you think of interviewing a widow two hours 
after her husband’s death, to get her version 
of his life? 

I — I think that is the work of a ghoul. Must 
the people have no privacy ? 

He — There is no domestic privacy in Ameri- 
ca. If there was, what the deuce would the 
papers do? See here. Some time ago I had 
an assignment to write up the floral tributes 
when a prominent citizen had died. 

I — Translate, please; I do not understand 
your pagan rites and ceremonies. 

He — I was ordered by the office to describe 
the flowers, and wreaths, and so on, that had 
been sent to a dead man’s funeral. Well, I 
went to the house. There was no one there 
to stop me, so I yanked the tinkler — pulled the 
bell — and drifted into the room where the 
corpse lay all among the roses and smilax. I 
whipped out my notebook and pawed around 
among the floral tributes, turning up the tick- 
ets on the wreaths and seeing who had sent 
them. In the middle of this I heard some one 
saying: “Please, oh, please!” behind me, and 
there stood the daughter of the house, just 
bathed in tears — 

I — You unmitigated brute! 


DEFENCELESS COASTS 


479 


He — P retty much what I felt myself. “I’m 
very sorry, miss,” I said, “to intrude on the 
privacy of your grief. Trust me, I shall make 
it as little painful as possible.” 

I — But by what conceivable right did you 
outrage — 

He — H old your horses. I’m telling you. 
Well, she didn’t want me in the house at all, 
and between her sobs fairly waved me away. I 
had half the tributes described, though, and the 
balance I did partly on the steps when the 
stiff ’un came out, and partly in the church. 
The preacher gave the sermon. That wasn’t 
my assignment. I skipped about among the 
floral tributes while he was talking. I could 
have made no excuse if I had gone back to 
the office and said that a pretty girl’s sobs had 
stopped me obeying orders. I had to do it. 
What do you think of it all ? 

I (slowly) — Do you want to know? 

He (with his notebook ready) — Of course. 
How do you regard it ? 

I — It makes me regard your interesting na^ 
tion with the same shuddering curiosity that 
I should bestow on a Pappan cannibal chewing 
the scalp off his mother’s skull. Does that 
convey any idea to your mind? It makes me 
regard the whole pack of you as heathens — 


480 


AMERICA’S 


real heathens — not the sort you send missions 
to — creatures of another flesh and blood. You 
ought to have been shot, not dead, but through 
the stomach, for your share in the scandalous 
business, and the thing you call your newspa- 
per ought to have been sacked by the mob, and 
the managing proprietor hanged. 

He — F rom which, I suppose you have noth- 
ing of that kind in your country? 

Oh! Pioneer, venerable Pioneer , and you 
not less honest press of India, who are oc- 
casionally dull but never blackguardly, what 
could I say? A mere “No,” shouted never so 
loudly, would not have met the needs of the 
case. I said no word. 

The reporter went away, and I took a train 
for Niagara Falls, which are twenty-two miles 
distant from this bad town, where girls get 
drunk of nights and reporters trample on 
corpses in the drawing-rooms of the brave 
and the free ! 









V 


N. 


























































